


Braveheart

by Haalke



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2018-08-13 15:06:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 61,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7980973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haalke/pseuds/Haalke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr Raina Callum meets Det. Sonny Carisi in a bar; stressful jobs, similar world views and their common sense of humour guarantee a match- but does it get too much, too soon?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Long Day

I was only one drink in and my head was pounding.

  
To be honest, though, there was a pain before I had even walked into that Chelsea bar. I spun the straw in my newly filled drink slowly, watching the liquid swirl in the rocks glass. The ice cube clanged a little against my glass, slightly obnoxiously but the bar wasn’t full, wasn’t busy. It was, of course, a Tuesday night- not exactly a popular night, even if it was Manhattan.

The water droplet of condensation had rolled down my finger on to my painted nails, dripping onto my napkin. I wiped it off, dampening the napkin.  
I was perched, heels hooked into the bar of the stool, at the corner of the bar. The news was on quietly on the TV in the top corner of the bar, filling the place with a sort of white noise. I could hear some conversations going on behind me, but nothing so interesting that made me try to listen in.  
Thinking of the things at work that lay ahead of me the next day made me want to reach behind the bar and grab the bottle of Jack Daniels in order to make my Jack and Coke, less Coke and more Jack. But I knew, in my sensible head, that facing the calamity the next day would only be a thousand times worse if I had to face it with a hangover.  
So, silently, I reasoned with myself; one more drink after this one and then leave. I would then grab a bottle of water from the 24 hour mart a block away and chug it on my ten minute walk back to my apartment. Usually, I wouldn’t have walked anywhere after a few drinks in the dark, but it was barely two weeks into September, so eight pm wasn’t that dark.

I sipped at my drink and put it back down on the bar, moving my elbow to rest up on the top. I pressed my middle finger into the middle of my forehead and rubbed a line in the middle, trying to force the headache away with closed eyes.  
“Hey. You okay?”  
My eyes opened slowly, and it took a few seconds for me to move them to look at the person who had spoken.  
There was a guy, sitting to my right, on the other edge of the bar, perpendicular to me. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed him sit down, seeing as he was closer to me than any of the other people in the place. And it was clear he hadn’t just arrived: he already had an almost empty beer bottle in front of him, placed beside a book and an iPhone.  
I took my hand away from my face and smiled politely. “I’m okay.”  
Still, he looked at me, bright green blue eyes alert despite the bags under them. His mousy brown hair was peppered with silver, just at his temples, and pushed back with gel into an almost fifties style quiff. It must have been the end of a long day, as a few strands had fallen out of its styled place.  
“Just a long…long day at work,” I pushed my black glasses up my nose. I felt obliged to expand, just a little to reassure him that I wasn’t an at-risk drunk.  
He nodded his head, smiling just a little. “I got you.”  
I had gotten used to a lot of accents since moving to New York almost ten years before, and I could tell immediately, he wasn’t a Manhattanite.  
I pulled my feet together, my heels clicked and I felt like I should say something, anything, so it wasn’t like I was being a totally dick.  
“Know the feeling?” I pressed my lips together.  
“Uh, yeah.” Although looking slightly surprised that I had spoken, he smiled at me again, tucking a bookmark into his text.  
Oh no. Now I had pulled him away from his reading, committed to some sort of conversation. Why did I? Why did I initiate anything further? He was obviously just making sure that I wasn’t going to pass out on the floor next to him due to an inability to remain sober, and now I had roped him into an exchange.  
I caught myself overthinking and tried to stop my inner monologue when he continued to speak.  
“Long week, really.” He pushed his book away. “And I just finished a date which totally bombed.”  
I glanced at my watch. It wasn’t even eight yet. “Bail out early?”  
“It was a mutual bail, believe me,” he ran his hand over his face. “Set up by my sister. I’m gonna kill her when I see her next.”  
I smiled and looked down at my drink, not wanting to laugh at his misfortune, god knows I had faced similar things.  
“So that’s my one evening off this night wasted.” He sighed.  
I knew that feeling. Curiosity piqued, I leant on my elbows, propping up my chin. “What do you do?”  
“Uh, I’m a cop.” He said before taking a swig of his beer.  
I don’t know why, but I got really impressed. I think it was the sound of a New Yorker say the word ‘cop’. I had dealt with the police through work, but it was weird, meeting someone who literally did the job you saw on TV all the time. “No way.” I looked at him.  
He set his beer down. His long, lean fingers pulled at the label on the glass. “Yeah.”  
It must have been the two drinks on a tired body that made me say it. “Prove it.”  
I watched him grin, lopsided and raise his eyebrow at me. I couldn’t help but grin back. “How do I prove it? You want me to arrest you or somethin’?”  
I laughed, entirely honestly. “I’m way over twenty one, I’m perfectly legal here.”  
The tip of his tongue grazed his lower lip before he bit on it, and reached his hand into the pocket of his jacket slung onto the back of his chair. He pulled out his wallet and passed it to me. I looked from his face to his hand before taking it from him. I opened it up and looked at the credentials.  
“Detective Dominick Carisi, Jr. NYPD.” I read aloud.  
“Everyone calls me Sonny.” He told me as I kept my eyes in his wallet.  
“I used to want to be in the police.” I spoke without looking up.  
“How’d you change your mind?”  
With a soft laugh, I told him the truth. “I really hate running.”  
I read the rest of the tiny words. Special Victims Unit Manhattan.  
“SVU?” I questioned, handing it back to him. I’d heard of them, just in passing, in case files and in conversations. And of course in the papers.  
He kind of squinted at me, slightly surprised I picked up on it so quickly. “Yeah.”  
“I’ve heard of the department in passing.” I shrugged. “I work at Bellevue. We get a lot of kickbacks from the NYPD.”  
“You in the prison ward?” he questioned.  
“No.” I shook my head. “I did a rotation in there, but I’m mainly in Adult Inpatient, do some outpatient services too.”  
“You a doc?”  
“You surprised?” I laughed at his open mouth.  
“I-” he shook his head. “Not like in a bad way. Just it’s interesting.”  
I breathed a laugh. “Yeah, interesting is one word for it.”  
“So you’re a psychiatrist?” he rebalanced himself after a slight throw off of my knowledge of his department.  
I nodded, to which he replied “Prove it.”  
With a roll of my eyes at his use of my own words, I reached down and fished my lanyard from my bag. It jingled as the laminates and cards hit off each other when I put it on the bar. He slid it towards him and looked through each one. One was my ID, the next three were key cards to get into different areas, then there was the card for the administration systems and the last one was to get into the garage of the hospital. That was the least worn one as I rarely drove to work.

“Raina Callum.” He read out my name just like I had done with his.  
“That’s me.” I spoke before taking another drink. The ice clinked off my teeth as I drained the glass and set it back down.  
“You’re not from round here, are you?” He passed my ID back to me.  
“You really are a Detective.” I zipped the lanyard back into my bag and straightened up. “I’m from the UK. I got my medical degree there and then got this research post grad thing at Columbia, did my residency at Bellevue and then specialised in the psychiatric wards. Pretty much been there since I arrived in the States.”  
“So Columbia brought you over from the UK?” he questioned. When I nodded, he looked impressed. “You must be smart.”  
I just shrugged.  
I was smart. I was so smart. I started studying medicine when I was seventeen, graduated top of my class when I was twenty two and got recruited by Cambridge and Columbia to do research posts in their post graduate schemes. I figured it was worth my while going to the States. I had intended to return home after I was finished, I practically promised my mother. But I got a residency and then a post and then another job and as the time went on, eventually I realised I didn’t want to work anywhere else.  
“Whereabouts in the UK?”  
I smiled and breathed out before getting him to guess.  
“Uh…Ireland?”  
“Close. Ish. Scotland.”  
“Alright, Braveheart.” He grinned. “So. What made work so hard today?”  
His question pulled me back.  
Our conversation had served as a good distraction from the events of the day, but his question reminded me of it all again. He noticed immediately when I pressed my lips together and I sat back a little.  
“Ah.” I raised a shoulder in a half shrug. “It’s nothing.”  
I could feel his eyes on me when I spun my empty glass. Weirdly, I didn’t want to finish our conversation. I wanted to keep talking. I didn’t know that much about him, yet it felt like I hadn’t stopped speaking since our first interaction.  
“So how long have you been with SVU?” I glanced up at him, my eyelashes brushing the lens of my glasses.  
Sonny breathed out. His name suited him, playful but kind of classic. “I joined Manhattan about a year and a bit ago. Bounced about a bit before then.”  
“You a problem child?” I asked.  
He laughed. “Aaah, kinda. Little tough to adjust to it seems.”  
“Police are pretty tight knit, right?”  
“Yeah. I managed to break the squad though, forced my way in there.”  
My eyes kept drifting down to his hands. His white shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, showing his forearms. I watched his tendons move when he swivelled his near empty bottle of beer around. He was pale, not quite as pale as I was, but his skin was smooth and creamy. I weirdly had an urge to reach out and run my fingers over the bluish veins revealed on the inside of his arms.  
It must have been the Jack.

“Raina?”  
I glanced back up at him when he said my name. “Sorry?”  
“Can I get you another drink?” he said, gesturing to my empty glass.  
I did say to myself earlier that I could have one more drink. But was I going to have a drink with him, was the question.  
He seemed sweet, if a little eager.  
“Um.” I bit at my lip. “Sure.”  
I didn’t know whether to regret it as soon as I said it, but then he beamed at me before gesturing to the bartender for the same again.  
“Just one though.” I clarified, but his smile didn’t fade away. “I can’t face the hospital smell with a hangover.”  
“I can never get used to that. I figured people who worked there would be used to it.”  
“I’m fine with it, unless I’m already feeling queasy.” I thought back to one horrendous instance when I was out for a few ‘quiet drinks’ with some nurses. We all came in the next day tempted to reach for the IVs for a quick cleanse.  
“So you lived in New York since you came over?”  
The drinks were placed in front of us and Sonny shook his head at me when I went for my purse. He passed the bartender money, whilst still waiting for my answer.  
“Yeah. Which also means I was broke until, like, last year. New York is expensive, man.” I stirred my drink with the straw before taking a sip.  
“You can find cheaper areas though. Where you stayin’?”  
“Meatpacking District.” I tucked my hand under my chin. “I’ve moved about a bit, but not very far. I was in Harlem, and then Washington Heights. And then I had a place in the Bronx. But this is my first time living alone. I had roommates and stuff before.”  
“How long you been in the District?”  
“Like, two years.” I pursed my lips, thinking. I had moved in a few months after getting my permanent post at the hospital. “You’re…obviously from New York somewhere.”  
Sonny laughed. “My accent gave me away, huh?”  
“Yeah.” I liked his laugh. It was childlike, kind of.  
“Staten Island, born and raised and almost never left. I just moved out when I got work in Manhattan.” He turned his body towards me more in the seat, so he didn’t have to keep twisting.  
He was dressed smartly, smarter than some of the non-uniformed police I had had dealings with. The white shirt was tucked into his dress pants, a blue tie with a tie pin set against his body. From his seated position, though, I could see his blue socks with yellow polka dots. He may have been a detective, but he was kinda like a tall, gangly kid.

By the time I had finished my drink, it was an hour later.

Sonny Carisi was fun.

I was having fun. And I was relaxed. Granted the drinks could have attributed to that, but I think it was the company more.  
We had spoken about a lot of things. Our families- his complete unit of three sister and loving parents, and my less simple, but equally as loving, divorced and remarried parental units and two younger half-sisters. Our careers, our lives, our friends; we talked about it all.  
With a groan, I looked at the watch that felt heavy on my wrist.  
Sonny made a face. “Leaving already?”  
“I have to get home. I’ve got a real trying twenty two year old to speak with in less than twelve hours.”  
It was the truth. My first patient appointment was at half nine the next morning with a girl called Joanie. She was newly sober and slightly reluctant to speak. I couldn’t be professional with her if I was tired and fragile.  
“You want me to get a cab?” he went to stand but I shook my head.  
“It’s okay, I’m just ten minutes away.” I pushed my stool out and went to stand.  
“You’re walking?” he raised his eyebrows at me, looking disapproving.  
“It’s not even ten yet. And it’s a busy street.” I pulled my coat from the back of my stool.  
“I’ll walk with you.” He didn’t ask, he just stood up.  
I tilted my head and stared at him, folding my coat over my arms. “You don’t have to do that.”  
“Got nothing much else to do.” Sonny smiled down at me.  
Now that we were standing, I felt very short. He was around, if not over, six foot. But his personality made him seem even taller.  
“Seriously, you don’t have-”  
It seemed he had to take a breath and stop himself being more stern. He pressed his fingers together and looked down at me. “Look, I’m not gonna push you on this, but I want to walk you home. I have seen a lotta crap in my job, I want you to be safe.”  
I closed my eyes and tilted my head to one side. He was right, I guess. And I didn’t really want to stop talking to him. “Okay. What if, though, what if people know that you’re a police officer, and some gang member is trying to get back at you for something and then they target me because I’m walking with you?”  
He laughed at me. “What would they be getting back at me for?”  
“Uh. You jailed the love of his life.” I shrugged. There was this wildly unfamiliar fluttering in my chest that happened every time I made him laugh.  
“So you’re saying it would be more dangerous for you to walk with me than on your own.”  
We left our seats and weaved through the tables to the door. His hand reached out over my head to open the door and I stepped out in front of him. I wasn’t cold enough to put on my coat just yet, so I carried it in my arm.  
“Yeah.” I said, checking I had everything with me. “So in trying to ensure my safety, you’ve actually just condemned me to death.”  
“Are you sure you’re a psychiatrist and not a patient?” his voice was teasing as we strolled along the street. It was a pretty straight shot to my apartment building.  
I laughed. I had laughed a lot with him. “I think Columbia would be pissed if it turned out I was.”  
“How would they know?” he asked.  
“They check up on you. I get letters and emails and alumni newsletters. I think they just want to make sure that I’ve been a good investment.”  
“Investment?”  
“I think they thought I would get a really high powered job in cardiology or something and I would go into consultancy and donate generously to the university. But it didn’t work out that well, I guess.”  
“Why’d you choose psychiatry?” He asked.

Good question. There were a lot of answers for that. I pulled my coat on, feeling the silk of the lining against my arms, before I answered him. “Different things. The connections you have with people are much bigger in psychiatry than in, say, orthopaedics. I think I was made more for helping people help themselves in medicine than just going in and fixing a broken heart valve. And I guess, probably the same reason why you’re in the police. I wanna help people. I’m smart but I’m not smart enough to cure cancer or save the world from global warming or save human race. But I think saving maybe one person is enough. Two or three if I’m really lucky.” I watched the ground pass as I walked, keeping my eyes down as we neared my place. It was a self-obsessed kind of comment, but it was the truth. I wanted to help people live their best lives.

I heard him breath next to me as we continued. “I think you’d probably save a lot more than two or three.”  
I turned and looked up at him, he was watching me as we wandered. He didn’t realise what his words were saying to me, especially in light of recent events. “How do you know? We literally just met. I could be the worst doctor of all time, you know.”  
He made a New York noise, one I had heard a lot living in the city, kind of a long ‘aaah’. “I think I’m a good judge of character, ya know?”  
I pressed my lips together, the words were coming up my throat before I could even ask why I was saying it. “Um. A patient was released a few weeks ago. He killed himself today.”  
Saying it aloud, to an outsider, made it feel so real. He didn’t say anything.  
“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. He wasn’t my patient. But I knew him. He was sweet, just turned twenty five. His dad found him. And obviously, there are investigations and stuff to be dealt with tomorrow and for the rest of the week and his doctor is gonna have to be triple checked.” I spoke quietly. “It was a good release though. He had been with us for a few months, pretty straight forward case and he was making good progress, released into the care of his family, who were stable and supportive. And now he’s dead.”  
It was so weird to tell him this. Sonny didn’t know him, Leo. He was just a stranger. He didn’t know his likes and dislikes, the fact that he wore orange trainers all the time, that he had scars on his hands from burns as a child. And now he was dead.  
He left a pause after I finished speaking, just in case I was going to continue. “Things happen.”  
“I know. I’ve dealt with this stuff before, but it’s still just weird. I still get kinda jarred by it all. I’m okay with that, though.” I cleared my throat. “That’s why I was out tonight. I just didn’t really want to go home.”  
“Been there.” He sighed. “You’ll deal with it. One bad case doesn’t outweigh the good you do.”  
His elbow grazed mine, nudging me in some sort of reassurance or comfort. And I did feel it, kind of, from just telling him about it, even if he was practically a stranger.  
I just smiled, chewed at my lip. We were getting close to my place, I would be home in moments. There was a weird part of me that wanted to take another walk around the blocks, just to stay out with him for a little longer. I could feel myself liking him.  
A relationship, even a short one, a superficial one, a fling one, was not something I was looking for. But I was into him. I knew it.

“You know what’s weird?” I said after a few moments of silence. “We might have already met, or something. In Bellevue or in court or something.”  
He shook his head almost immediately. “Nah. I would have remembered you.”  
God, what a line. But still my stomach flipped a little. “Yeah right.” I scoffed at him, shoving my hands in my pocket as I veered him round the corner. Just a street away from home now.  
“No, I would have!” he chuckled loudly. “I would have recognised your laugh. You’ve gotta great laugh.”  
“I don’t tend to laugh in court, Sonny.” I bit at my lip. His words were definitely filled with flirting tendencies.  
“Okay, but I would have recognised you.” He insisted. “I know I would have.”  
I tucked my chin into the neck of my coat. I wasn’t going to continue this, not when I had a few drinks and he was being so sweet.  
I saw my apartment building looming in front of us. I hadn’t realised how much I really didn’t want to finish our night until I saw my place.  
“This is me.” I gestured to the door. I loved my apartment. I loved the building, the location, the people who lived around me. It was safe and it was comfortable and I felt at home there, more so that I had done the few years previous.  
“Nice place.” Sonny looked up. It was eight storeys: I was on the third floor.  
“I like it.” I smiled.  
There were four steep steps up to the entrance of the brownstone, walls a metre high on either side of the steps. I stepped up the first one and turned to face him, leaning my arm on the wall by my side.  
His hand reached out and rested on the wall next to me. “So. It was really nice meeting you.”  
I sucked the inside of my lip and dipped my head a little bit. “Right back at you.”  
And then silence. Again.

“What are you doing the rest of the week?” he asked eventually.  
I smiled. “Well, I’m working. And, uh, I have a breakfast Sunday morning. And apart from that, I’m free. Why?”  
He laughed, just a little, and looked down the street coyly. “You know why.”  
“No, I don’t.” I laughed at his schoolboy expression. “I don’t.”  
Again, he came out with that New York noise. “I wanna take you out to dinner or somethin’, okay?”  
“Oh.” I grinned, watching him. My fingers rolled over some stone fragments on the wall. “That sounds cool.”  
“Yeah?”  
“Yeah.” I laughed. God, I felt like a kid again.  
“So, here’s my card.” Sonny reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and gave it up to me. I turned it over in my hands, reading his name and his number off of it.  
“Do you give this out to everyone?” I asked him, seeing the two different numbers printed onto it.  
He nodded. “To victims and people who might need to contact us and stuff.”  
“This is your personal phone number?”  
“And my desk. So you can’t say you didn’t know how to reach me.” His eyes were on my face, smirking just a little.  
“Man, you don’t shut off, do you?” I raised my eyebrows. With so many people having access to his number, I was surprised he was ever apart from it.  
“You…got a number?” His fist was clenching on the wall, nervous a little. My heart jumped, even though I tried to suppress it.  
“Yeah.” I reached into my bag to the front pocket where I kept some cards. It had my name, followed by the letters I had earned from my degrees, Bellevue’s address and the wards I worked in as well as my office number and email. I turned it over and scrawled my number on the back of it with the pen that was tucked into the pocket with the cards. “I don’t tend to give my number out to patients, as you can imagine.” I told him whilst writing.  
“Really? I’d give it to everyone. In fact, I do give it to everyone.”  
“Oh, thanks.” I scoffed before giving him my card.  
He rushed to take back his words. “No, I don’t mean-”  
But I laughed to cut him off, happy when he shook his head bashfully. He took the card and looked at it, turning it over in his fingers before slipping it into his pocket.  
“Thank you for my drink, by the way.” I pursed my lips. “I’ll have to pay you back for that at some point.”  
“I’ll hold you to it.” Sonny’s body was leaning, just a little towards me. I knew, or at least I hoped, that with him being an SVU detective, he wasn’t expecting anything. And I wasn’t going to kiss him, I wasn’t going to invite him upstairs. But I did stick out my hand.  
He eyed it with humour and placed his hand in mine to shake it. “Good night, Doc.”  
“Good night, Detective.” I tried to ignore his thumb smoothing over the back of my hand, the pressure firm. Our hold of each other’s hands went on a few seconds too long for it to be anything near professional. “I really gotta get upstairs.” I moved backwards up the step, dropping his hand, keeping my eye on him. I was now two steps away and just taller than him.  
“Well. I’ll… be in touch.” He didn’t quite know what to say, I knew that.

I turned away from him and quickly took the last two stairs before unlocking the door. I was aware of him watching me, and I was okay with that.  
There was just a sliver of myself tempted to pause at the door to invite him upstairs, but that part was overpowered. Because I knew, weirdly, that even though a relationship wasn’t the top of my priorities at that moment in time, I did not want Sonny Carisi to be just a one night stand.


	2. An Italian at an Italian

“And then she told me that because she covered my shift three months ago, I had a duty as a team player to cover for her. Sign there too.”   
I sat at my desk, shaking my head as my nurse friend, Bev, vented about the general office politics. I was the newest and youngest of the psychiatrists in the ward, with the other three being what I called proper adults. They had families, mortgages, vegetable patches. We were so different that we never really clashed on office things, or even on treatment options. The hospital in a wider view, however, was a different story. Every team, every ward, every department had dramas, just like in all other offices.   
“And I would, ya know, if she had asked me nicely, in advance and sounded grateful for it. But asking me the day before just so she can go to some party her loser ass man is throwing? Nuh uh, no way, honey.” Bev was splayed out on the seat across from my desk, her legs outstretched and her elbows hanging over the arms of the chair. She was tired, coming to the end of her fifth twelve hour shift in a row. She had to vent otherwise she’d have fallen asleep.   
When I was tired and stressed, her clippy Brooklyn accent grated on me, but nine times out of ten, she was one of the best people to talk to.   
“So did she get it covered?” I asked Bev, not looking up from the order forms for medicine that I was in the process of vetting and signing for her.   
She snorted. “Yeah, she bullied that new girl, you know the quiet mousy girl?”  
“Megan.”   
“Yeah, her. I tell you somethin’, she’s gonna have to perk up and perk up fast if she’s gonna last around here.” She shook her head, twisting the engagement ring that adorned her finger.   
“She’s only been here a few months. She’ll settle soon.” With one last sign of my name, I looked up. “By the way, did Dr Conrad leave notes for me?”   
“Yeah, they’re there.” she gestured to the top of my filing cabinet.   
“Ah.” I stood up and retrieved them, glancing quickly at the papers. “I’m taking his group on Tuesday.”  
“Is that the group Lucky is in?” Bev asked as I came back to sit down. She ignored the fact I had kicked off my shoes and was walking around my office in my tights. I had had a meeting that morning with a care review over Leo’s suicide and had opted for smart heels despite the pinching of my toes.   
I flicked through the papers before finding Saul ‘Lucky’ Ocada’s sheets. “Yup.”   
“Not gonna lie, he’s becoming my favourite patient.”   
I smiled, reading the front of his notes. Aged thirty four, finished up detox for the third time a month ago. He was a newbie compared to the long standing patients. 

Noise in the corridor attracted my attention and I looked up through my open door. The doctors’ offices marked the border between in and out patient areas. There were two elevators in- one that brought you to the inpatient areas, with the patients’ rooms and communal spaces and their treatment rooms with the nurses stations and everything needed. The other lift brought you into the outpatient area, with those treatment rooms. The two groups had shared spaces but each group had areas of limits to separate the idea of inpatient and outpatient. From my office, I could see up the corridor to the nurses’ station. I could see one of the older patients, Mr Strial yelling. I watched for a few seconds, debating whether I had to step in, but one of the nurses calmed him in a matter of moments.   
I checked my watch. Officially I had finished seventeen minutes ago, but I just had to dot some I’s on paperwork before leaving for the weekend.   
“What are you doing tonight?” Bev took the forms I was completing and double checked them.   
I pressed my lips together and debated whether to tell her. She was probably one of my closest friends at work, and I had already told her about Sonny. “Um. I’m supposed to be getting dinner with Sonny, that detective I told you about. He bailed on me last night.”   
“He bailed on you? The boy deserves the garbage then.” She said, matter of fact.   
I laughed softly before locking the files into my desk drawer. “It’s not his fault.” I defended him, slipping my feet back into my shoes with a wince. I was pretty gutted when he had called me, apologising. He wittered on about how it was a case and they were in the middle of it and he wasn’t going to be home until late but wanted to reschedule for the next night. “It was work. He called me just as I finished work, so it wasn’t like I was waiting for him like a moron.”   
“Where were you supposed to go?” she questioned.   
I set my bag on my desk and started to pack up my things. “Some Italian place. I’m meeting him at Union Square Station. Which will be jumping on a Friday night.”   
“What you gonna do, bring a red rose for him to recognise you?” she snorted, getting up from her seat.   
I laughed before fetching my jacket from the back of the door. I threw it on and grabbed my bag to leave. “I gotta text him make sure we’re still on for tonight.”   
“On or on?” she nudged me with a grin. I laughed at her boldness.   
“It’s just dinner.” I shouldered my bag, pulling the door closed behind me.   
“You definitely have a type. I mean, you like the good guys.” She leant against the wall as I locked my office door. “The fireman, the teacher, the naval guy.”   
“I’m making up for when I was stuck on the losers when I was younger.” I made a face. They weren’t all losers, really, just a couple. And I didn’t expect more from them because I had met them in loser like situations. “Anyway, we might not even meet up. I mean if the police are busy on a Thursday night then they’ll sure as hell be busy on a Friday.”  
“Has he text you?” Bev led the way up the corridor as I glanced at my phone.   
“We’ve been texting since I woke up on Wednesday.” I couldn’t hide my giddy smile. “But he hasn’t text since last night. He was real sorry, you know?”   
“Yeah, he stands you up tonight then the boy better be begging for your mercy and another date.” She rolled her eyes.   
I groaned at her negativity as we reached the nurses station. “I thought newly engaged people were supposed to be into promoting romance and stuff.”   
With a scoff, she twisted her ring around her finger again, just like she had been doing in the seven weeks since she got engaged. “David was out till two last night at the bar. He thinks that now he’s put a ring on my finger he’s off the hook for the next six months.” With a shake of her head she wished me luck and said goodnight.   
I laughed my way over to the elevator.   
“Goodnight, Dr Callum.” Roger spoke, without really looking at me. Roger, a man in his fifties, frequently entered catatonic states as part of his schizophrenia’s symptoms. But tonight he was shuffling, like he would do for the next few hours, up and down the corridor- bothering nobody.   
“Goodnight, Roger.” I smiled softly before stepping into the elevator and travelling down the floors to the main atrium. 

Walking across the atrium, I texted Sonny to double check that we were still okay to meet at six. I had barely put my phone away when he replied;  
Absolutely- unless you’re bailing on me tonight? Can’t wait to see you- this is gonna be the best dinner you have ever eaten, trust me. S x  
I smiled at the text and bit on my lip before pulling my coat tight around me and heading outside. The bus stop was only a few minutes away so I didn’t bother putting in my headphones but I couldn’t stop my mind from going over the hundred and one scenarios in my head.   
Were we gonna have things to talk about? Was it going to be awkward? Or was it going to be amazing and I’d fall in love with him instantly?   
We had already covered a lot of the polite small talk over our night at the bar and the texts, so were we going to be getting the deep backstory? That’s how a lot of my therapy sessions worked- patients took a meet or two to be able to unlock anything real.   
The bus was busy so I stood, holding onto the bar, watching the streets pass by. I was experiencing a weird nervous tic on the journey, in that I kept checking my phone. Literally every other minute I was checking to dissolve my paranoia that he was going to cancel on me.   
I couldn’t not chew my lip but in order to stop myself checking for texts, I shoved in my earphones. The music served as a welcome distraction, I could feel myself relaxing, a little bit. 

This wasn’t me, I didn’t get nervous over guys. I didn’t stress myself out about relationships anymore, I had practically refused to. But this one. This guy was different. I couldn’t help but feel tense. I couldn’t help it. I could have used a million and one relaxation techniques we preached at the hospital, but it was no match for the anticipation of seeing him.   
Off the bus, I stood by the railings we had arranged to meet at. But I didn’t have to wait long.   
A hand touched my back, long fingers pressed into my coat. I turned around to see him, tall and gangly still. Instantly, he pulled me into his body for a hug. I was surprised, but welcoming of it just not ready. My hands were in my pockets and I had to quickly take them out to reciprocate the hug, just a little at least. My face was pressed against his shoulder, my nose brushing his shirt.   
“Hey.” I laughed, moving back and pulling my earphones out.   
“Hi,” he let go of me, stepping back a little so I didn’t have to stare up at him as much. “How are you?”   
“I’m good.” I said, honestly. Seeing him hadn’t really calmed me any more. I knew I would have to sit and get comfortable before my nerves faded. When I met him I had a drink that had made me confident. Psychiatrists shouldn’t admit to using drink as a confidence booster, but it was true for everyone. “How are you? How’s work?”   
“I’m fine. Listen, I gotta say again- I’m real sorry about last night.” He started an apology, waving his hands emphatically. “We had a thing yesterday morning. We’re literally still working on it but I managed to get the night off. I would have left if-”  
I laughed a little and lowered his hand, clutching at his wrist. “Sonny, don’t even worry about it-okay? I get it. I’ve had to cancel things because I’m on call before, I get when you can’t do something.”   
His face relaxed into a grin. “Thank god. I thought for sure you were gonna ditch me.”   
“What kinda person do you think I am?” I shoved at his arm, biting back my grin.   
“Yeah, well, I didn’t really think you would. Guys at work were winding me up about it.” He shrugged, glancing over his shoulder.   
He had told his workmates like I had told mine. I just bit the inside of my cheek and shook my head with a smile. “So where are we actually going?  
“Ah, come with me. It’s an Italian place on Tenth Street. My parents took me and my sisters there for big celebrations- graduations, engagements, all that stuff.” He gestured across the street.   
“You? Visiting an Italian place? No way.” I ran my tongue over my teeth, glancing up at him. He laughed at me, shaking his head.   
“Can you believe it?”   
The restaurant was only a five minute walk away. Although his legs were way, way longer than mine, he slowed his pace to let me keep up with him.   
He was welcomed like they knew him and he grinned like the staff were his long-time friends. Maybe they were. I watched them chat for a few minutes before they settled us into a booth by the corner.   
“What, do you bribe them or something?” I laughed, shrugging out of my coat.   
With a chuckle, he shook his head. “Nah, just a semi frequent flier.”  
We hadn’t even been sitting two minutes before a waiter, bouncy and upbeat, asked if we would like some drinks.   
“Could I have the house red, please?” I asked without looking at the menu. The waiter nodded with a smile before looking to Sonny who just order a coke. “You not having a drink?”   
He cleared his throat and shook his head. “I’ve to be back in work for half seven.”   
I felt guilty- guilty for pulling him away from work, for keeping him when I know I would have rathered be in bed if I were him. “Seriously, we can reschedule if you want. You need to sleep and-”  
He cut me off with a hand up. “Raina, I really wanted to see you. I wasn’t gonna cancel again.”   
I pulled my lip between my teeth and suppressed a smile, my eyes studied carefully on his face, his one sided smile. “I’m glad. Also, I’m starving so I’m really looking forward to the food, especially if it’s the best meal I ever have just like you promised.”  
“I swear, it’s so good, you’ll love it.” He promised me, folding his napkin on his lap. 

I opened up the menu to see exactly what I expected, Italian home cooking type meals. Comfort food, which I welcomed with open arms.   
“So,” Sonny glanced up at me from his menu. “How was work?”   
“It was pretty normal, as normal as it can be. One of the Doctors are out next week so I’m taking some of his patients so I’ve got group therapy stuff to organise.” I chattered on. “So looking forward to the weekend though.”   
“How did everything go with that kid who died?” Sonny’s eyes were clear blue, intense. I glanced away from him before speaking.   
“Alright, kind of. Something happened after he left- his friend OD’d and I guess he couldn’t cope with it. So the hospital’s pretty much cleared.” I told him. “I just…it’s still awful, obviously.”   
“Is that your, like, first death?” his expression was tense, like he didn’t know if he should really be asking it.   
I fiddled with the napkin on the table. “No,” I scraped my teeth against my bottom lip. “I’ve been involved with a few. Not involved like I killed them-obviously.”   
“Yeah, you should rephrase that when talking to a detective.” He laughed, leaning forward in his seat.   
“Probably.” I agreed with a smirk. “Just different circumstances since I’ve been working at Bellevue. But that’s a slightly less upbeat conversation topic than we should probably be covering.”   
“Feels like I could talk to you about anything.” He said offhand. I don’t think he released that was a slightly deep statement until it was out of his mouth. His cheeks flushed a little as he shook his head. “That was weird, sorry.”   
I laughed, loudly, just as our drinks arrived. “I’m taking it as a compliment.”   
“Good- I meant it like that.”   
And just like that, with the first break of tension, I felt at ease. And the evening continued like that, smooth and comfortable with making jokes about each other and about everything else. Time slipped by us so quickly, I was too focussed on his boisterous laughter and easy manner to check my watch. 

“…so I walk in and she’s in the kitchen at the worktop with her tattoo gun and pig ears.”   
We were in the middle of swapping out worst roommate experiences. I mean, I hadn’t had that many, but the bad was bad.   
“Pig ears?” he grimaced, half laughing in disbelief.   
“Yeah. Apparently, pig skin is real similar to human. She was using it as practise. I had just got off a twelve hour shift and I flipped. I went to stay with my boyfriend at the time and I called my other roommate, she came home and we went round and were like ‘you gotta go, pal.’ No way I was living another week with that girl. But now? She’s working out of her apartment tattooing people. Like people who are paying. And I wanna go round her customers and be like ‘she is insane, stay the hell away’.” I shook my head, finishing off my wine.   
“That definitely tops my stories.” He admitted, although his tale of the guy who got himself off in the living room all the time was a close second. Very close.   
“Can we get you guys anything else?” The waiter appeared at my side to clear away the dessert plates that had served the most delicious tiramisu.   
“You want another glass?” Sonny gestured to me but I shook my head immediately.   
“God no, one more glass I’d be in my bed all day tomorrow.” I admitted, knowing I couldn’t handle my fourth glass, even on my full stomach. “Just the bill?” I asked- directing to the waiter and to Sonny. They both nodded.   
It was half nine, the same time I had left him on Tuesday night. “Have I got red wine teeth?” I made a face so he could see my teeth.   
He chuckled at me, shaking his head. “Nah. You’re perfect.”   
My stomach felt warm. Partly from the wine, yes, but also entirely due to Sonny. “As long as my teeth are.” I smoothed down my skirt under the table. “I feel like I’m giving a bad impression. I don’t normally drink, especially not on school nights, but I do like a drink.”   
“I wasn’t judging.” Sonny ran his hand through the side of his hair. He had rolled up his sleeves of his blue shirt during dinner, partly to avoid getting Bolognese sauce on himself, but the reveal of his forearms made my pulse race, just a little. I felt like a kid. “I would be having a beer if I wasn’t working tomorrow.”   
“How long do you think you’ll be in tomorrow?” I asked.   
“Ahh. Who knows? I’ll probably finish for dinner, about eight or so. I’ll be off on Sunday and Monday though. My OT is gonna be topped out because I was on call last week.”   
“How does your on call work? Like are you guys just on call all the time?” I questioned, genuinely interested.   
He made a face. “Honestly, I don’t know a hundred percent how it works. We take it in turns about who’s first response, so like me and my partner are every third week, but everything goes through Liv- our Lieutenant- most of the time. How does yours work?”   
“We swap around too. Take a week every five weeks, but I just do Bellevue. I’m about for anyone who just walks into the ED and says they’re suicidal or having a breakdown. Most of the psychiatric wards are run completely by nurses and support staff between seven at night and eight in the morning.”   
“You get called out a lot?”   
I shrugged. “It can vary. The Holidays are tough for people, we’re busier then. But a lot of the time, it’s just coming in, checking up, doing some medication and tiding them over until everyone comes in. I’ve slept in the on call room though, and it’s not that bad.”   
“Same with us. Although, the amount of times I’ve hit my head on one of those damn bunk beds.”   
I laughed as the bill came over. I dreaded the bill debacle, no matter who I was with. We both reached for it and proceeded to argue lightly over it.   
“Dude, no.” I shook my head before settling on dividing it. “We’re splitting it and that’s final.”   
Defeated, he rolled his eyes at me. “Whatever you say, Braveheart.”   
I ignored his Braveheart comment and reached for my purse. Rummaging through, I got a glimpse of my phone and saw a text from my little sister.   
“You okay?” Sonny asked me in response to my staring into my bag.   
I pulled my attention back to him. “Uh, yeah.” I pulled out the money and set it by the bill. “Just a text from my sister.”   
“Oh, yeah?” he raised his blonde eyebrows in question.   
“Yeah, I’ll text her later. She wants to see if I’ll be home for her birthday. I told our dad that I wouldn’t but he’s obviously not told her.” I shook my head. He never relayed my messages to her, I didn’t even know why I had bothered.   
“So it’s your dad’s kid?”   
I nodded. “Tara. It’s her fifteenth birthday next week. And I love her, but I’m not flying halfway across the world to sit in a room of fifteen year old kids just to fly back to return to a half week’s worth of work.” It sounded a little harsh. “I’ll see her at Christmas time anyway.”  
I had briefly explained my family history to him when we had met at the bar. My mum and dad were eighteen and nineteen when I was born and they jumped into marriage out of fear. Needless to say, the marriage fell apart dramatically before I reached high school. Cue them arguing for a few years before they both settled down to start their real, adult families. Both of them had girls, Tara was my dad’s and seven years after she was born, my mother gave birth to my youngest sister; Felicity. I don’t think they were that devastated when I slipped off to America.   
“Is it hard being away from them all?” his brow creased. I felt like it was an insight into what he was like at work; listening, leaning in.   
I reached over to get the mints the waiter had left on our bill plate. “It comes and goes. I never really… I don’t know. After they both got remarried, it was like they had a false start with me. I was really good at school and smart and they just didn’t really connect with it. By the time I was in high school, my dad had a new wife and then they had Tara and then when I was going to uni, it happened again with my mum. So we just missed each other a bit.”   
It was weird talking about it. I loved my family, but I knew that being home for those short periods of time; on vacation, for events and holidays, it was like a novelty. Any longer than those weeks would lead to clashes and I didn’t want to deal with it.   
“Do you talk to them though? Like your mom and dad and all that?”   
“We message each other and I stay with my mum when I’m home. I talk to the girls more than my parents, I think.” I admitted. I sat for a second, popping the mint into my mouth and moving it around with my tongue. “Man, you get me talking.”   
He laughed at my words. It was true. “I’m just hoping you don’t admit to a crime, that’s what usually happens.”   
“You could never break me.” I joked, narrowing my eyes.   
“I’d try.” He spoke softly, watching me. I knew he would. “How you gettin’ home?”   
“I’ll get the train from West 4th.” I took in a breath. I saw his expression. He didn’t say anything, but his brow twitched in concern. “Or I could get a cab.”   
He gave me a tight smile. “I’m being a paranoid ass, I know. I just… you…”  
“I get it.” I shrugged, internally pleased that he was concerned, but I knew this would get weary if we were going to go through it every time we got together. “Honestly, I usually get a cab when I have a drink. I even have an app. How you going home?”   
“How long will a cab be?” he asked. “I’m gonna get the subway from 8th and Broadway.”   
I booked the car and read the information from my phone. “Thirteen minutes, apparently. How long is the train back to yours?”   
He lived in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn. “Like a half hour.”  
I nodded. “You mind if we wait outside?” It was starting to get busy in this charming little Italian. “I think the wine is overheating me.”   
We slipped out of our booth and Sonny said goodbye to the staff that he had spoken with at the start of our meal. 

The fresh air was welcome in my lungs and seemed to clear any wooziness I was feeling. I slipped my jacket on before moving away from the door.   
“You look real nice tonight, by the way. I meant to say when we met.” Sonny’s eyed my outfit and I smiled, thanking him. It was just work clothes; a knee length burgundy pencil skirt with a white blouse and black heels. My coat was baby pink. I had learnt very quickly when I moved to New York that coats and jackets were my single greatest weapon. It was cold in Scotland, but it was always rain jacket weather rather than warm coat.   
“I had a meeting this morning, so had to break out the smart clothes. I actually kinda like being on call so I can wear scrubs.” I admitted.   
I kept my phone in my hand, awaiting the buzz from the cab app, as we leant against the wall, just a few metres from the entrance to the restaurant. We faced inwards to each other, coats tight against us.   
“It’s colder tonight.” He commented, scanning my face.   
“It’s just windy. Knowing this city, it’ll be the hottest day of the year tomorrow and then snow the day after that.” I rolled my eyes.   
This was it. Was I gonna kiss him? Was I gonna offer him a hug as I ducked into my taxi?   
I already knew, really, because I could already feel that I wanted to see him again, and we hadn’t even left each other yet. It was entirely unfamiliar; the settled, comfortable feeling yet mixed with excitement and tension. I hadn’t felt like that in almost four years, really.   
“I had a really good time tonight.” I tilted my head to the side, looking at him. My shoulder was cold as we leant against the brick wall, but it didn’t bother me.   
He grinned in part delight, part relief, I think. “Me too. And for the hundredth time, I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have… I don’t know. I should-”  
I didn’t want to hear his apology anymore, we had settled that. I didn’t want to have him feel guilty or bad about cancelling, but I knew there was no way he get over it if I didn’t reassure him about it. I reached out the few inches and grabbed his tie, using it to pull him towards me. I reached up on my tiptoes, because even in heels I was too short to reach him. I pressed my lips against his, feeling the warmth of his chest against my hand. 

I pulled back after just a few seconds because I felt embarrassment rush to my face when I realised he didn’t respond. He didn’t kiss me back. He didn’t move his hands to me. He didn’t do anything.   
And I wasn’t used to that.   
I never, ever, made the first move. And the only time I had done it, the guy hadn’t even responded. 

I opened my mouth to say something; an apology, a defence- just something to smooth over the situation and avoid me looking like a lascivious idiot. But Sonny’s hand came up to my waist and nudged me back towards him.   
Quickly, he caught my lips with his, finally reciprocating. My hands rested on his arms, fingers clutching his coat, as his nose brushed against mine, bumping at my glasses just a little. My lips parted almost instantly but despite my rushing, it was a slow kiss. Slow but soft and sensual. I could feel the buzzing in my chest and a soft noise come from my throat when his tongue grazed against my lower lip. I was sure he could feel everything; every blemish and tooth mark of my ever chewed lips, the scar just a tiny bit inside my lip from when I had once burst it open in med school. He had a shadow of a beard that had grown since that morning’s shave and it was brushing against my chin, just a little bit. But I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind at all.   
In seconds, it had gone from soft and somewhat chaste to intense and overwhelming.   
I didn’t want this to happen in the middle of a Manhattan street on a Friday night. Reluctantly, I took a half step back, parting my lips from his. He kind of half followed me, still moving towards me for a second before he opened his eyes. He blinked away the haze of desire that I had already had to force out of my eyes the moment before.   
Softly, and somewhat shyly, I smiled up at him, sleepy and alert at the same time. “I thought for sure you weren’t into that when I kissed you first.”   
It took him a half second to reply. “Sorry. I, uh, I didn’t want to push you. I didn’t want to go too fast.”   
He was one of the sweetest men I had ever met. I leant myself against the wall again but settled my hand on his chest, smoothing down his tie. “Sorry, I grabbed your tie.”   
Sonny snorted a laugh. “I’d sacrifice all my ties for that.”   
I smiled, pressing my lips together. I could still feel them tingling.   
But then my phone buzzed. I glanced down at the screen. “Oh. The car’s like two minutes away.”   
He pursed his lips and scrunched up his nose. “I guess we can’t stand here all night.”   
“We could try, but eventually my legs would get tired.” I admitted.   
“We could sit down.”   
“We’d look homeless.”  
“We have iPhones.”   
“They’re practically essential these days.” I pointed out.   
“That is true.” He admitted before starting to laugh.  
I chewed the inside of my cheek, watching out for the cab that was supposed to be arriving for me. “We should do this again.”   
“Especially that last bit.” he raised his eyebrows, making me smile.   
“The whole night was great. Think you’d wanna?”  
“You can expect me calling you, Raina.” He promised me. His hand reached up and brushed a strand of my dark copper hair from my face, tucking it just by my ear. The gesture was soft, just like his whole demeanour that night.   
A yellow taxi crawled to a halt by the kerb. I squinted to read the licence plate though my glasses. It matched the one that had been dispatched on the app.   
“That’s me.” I stood up off of the wall. His hand stayed at my back as we approached the cab, double checking it was for me.   
I felt on edge, like I couldn’t say goodbye to him like I wanted to with the driver waiting for me. Sonny, I think, sensed that and opened the door to the back seat. He simply leant down and kissed me quickly.   
“I’ll call you.” His hand squeezed my arm.  
“I know.”


	3. Come In

Sonny  
Sonny stretched his arms out at his desk, his elbows clicked at the movement. It was six pm. He had been working for almost twelve hours. Two days ago they had found a child who had been missing for almost 50 hours but now came the evidence collecting; ensuring their suspect was one hundred percent guilty and their case was airtight.   
“I’m gonna call it.” Sonny sighed, locking his computer. “I can barely see straight right now.”  
He looked over to the only one from his squad that was still with him; Amanda Rollins. She shovelled a handful of chips in her mouth and nodded before swallowing.   
“I’m gonna stay here for a bit. Saves me coming in early next week.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin and chucked it into the trash from her seat.   
She had been working late the last few nights. Partly, Sonny thought, because she wasn’t bothered about being home, but partly because she felt she still had something to prove; that despite her incredibly growing belly that was accommodating her first child, she was still as valuable to the team as she ever was.   
Sonny just nodded and stood up, pulling on his jacket.   
“Before you go can you make me a coffee?” she asked him, rubbing her stomach as if reminding him she was pregnant.   
“You shouldn’t be drinking all this coffee.” Sonny shook his head, tidying his desk a little. “When my sister was pregnant, my Ma practically banned her from caffeine. Which was a tough slog.”  
“I’ll take a tea then.” She changed her mind with a slight scowl at his coddling of her.   
He went over to make her a tea, knowing that it was taking her longer to move about. Her desk duty order would be imminent.   
Sonny mulled over what he was gonna do when he got home, maybe go for a run, or he could pick up take out. And then suddenly Raina sprung to his mind. He had forced himself not to think about her all day, he didn’t want her and his work muddled up in his mind. He didn’t want Raina touched by the toughness of his job. But as soon as he had readied himself to leave, thoughts of her came rushing back.   
I’ll see if she’s busy, he thought to himself. Maybe cook for her, see if she wants to stay the night. Almost immediately he rethought that last part. Possibly too presumptuous. But dinner. Dinner would be good.

Raina

My cat was clawing at my leg.   
Guppy was a scruffy black thing. She never looked elegant like cats usually did. She always looked like she had just finished up a fight and was ready for a big meal.   
A week into living entirely on my own, I had caved and realised it was too quiet, even in Manhattan. So I went to the shelter with a friend and Guppy picked me out, really. Her coat was patchy and one of her ears had a chunk missing. But she was perfect for me. Weirdly clingy and loving but acted like she didn’t need me.   
“Guppy, stop.” I whined at her. I took my feet off the footstool and juggled my laptop on my knee before scooping up the cat and setting her next to me.   
It was Saturday, late afternoon. I had welcomed a long lie before eventually dragging myself out and forcing my legs to take me to the gym. I got myself ready to get some groceries and since I had returned, I had taken up post on my sofa with my laptop and remote.   
It was a good day.   
“What do you think, bubs? Do I need these boots?” I murmured, scrolling through the page on my laptop. I had a serious online shopping habit. Not excessive. I just really like shopping and I really liked sales and I really like getting deliveries. “I do need them. Because it is autumn, practically. And we all know what comes after Autumn. Winter. And you need boots for those seasons.”   
I was switching between online browsing and typing up non urgent reports whilst also watching the The Good Wife on demand on the TV. I mean, it wasn’t the most professional thing to do; interchanging writing about the effects of clozapine with looking at jeans, but who was going to know? Nobody- except me and my cat.   
In the middle of a very awkward interaction on my TV between Alicia and Will, my phone began to ring. I shuffled about in my spot, searching for my phone which always ended up sliding between the cushions. I captured it in my hand after only four or so rings. Sonny Carisi’s name lit up on my phone.   
My stomach jumped without warning. I cleared my throat before swiping the screen to answer it.   
“Hello?” I answered, smiling already.   
“Hey, it’s Sonny.”   
I almost laughed. “I know, I have your number.”   
He made a noise at the other end of the phone. “Of course you do. I knew that. We’ve been talking to each other all week.”   
I stretched, holding onto my phone and laptop, for the remote to pause the show so I could pay attention to him.   
“The wonders of 21st century technology.” I said as I finally reach over Guppy for the remote. “What are you up to? Still out keeping our streets safe?”   
He breathed a laugh. “Actually, we finished up our case sooner than expected. Just paperwork left to do but that can wait till Monday. So I’m just home.”   
I glanced at the time on my laptop. It was just past six. “Oh, that’s good. Earlier than expected.”  
“Yeah. So what are you doing?”  
“Uh. Nothing really. I’m just watching TV and doing some work and just chilling with the cat.” I admitted. It shied in comparison to his day, I was sure.   
“You have a cat?”   
“Yeah.” I reached out to scratch behind the black creature’s one fully formed ear. “Guppy.”   
“‘Guppy’ like the fish?” he questioned. I could practically hear the crease of his brow.   
“Yeah. Felicity named her. The kid’s a little weird, she really likes fish. She has a whole tank of tropical ones and she has names for them all and knows everything about them.” I told him. It was true. It was the one obsession she had. When I was younger, it was volcanoes. Tara really liked superheroes. “Like, there’s no way we could flush one of her fish and replace it. She’d know straight away.”   
I could hear him laugh. “Kids are weird, man.”  
“Yeah, I know.” I sighed.   
There was a slight pause before he spoke again. “Cause I finished earlier, I was thinking, do you wanna come over for dinner?”   
I blinked a few times before responding like I hadn’t understood the question. “Dinner?”   
“Yeah. You eaten yet?”   
“Nope. I...dinner sounds good, actually.” I twisted a strand of my hair in my finger, feeling anxious, just a little bit.   
“Yeah? Good. I, uh, was thinking of making some chicken pasta bake. It’s a sauce my ma makes. But I know we had Italian food last night, so I just wanted to see if you wanted anything else.”   
I grinned, glad that he couldn’t see my embarrassingly excited beam. “No, no. Sounds nice. Um. Can you text me your address?”  
“Yeah. I can meet you at the station next to my place if you want.”   
I pursed my lips and mulled it over for a second. “I’ll probably just drive.”   
“You have a car?”  
“Yeah. A car and a cat. I’m full of c related surprises.” I closed over my laptop. “There’s just not much point driving to work, it’s quicker and cheaper to take transport, really.”   
“Yeah, yeah.” He spoke softly, distracted. “Anyway, so you’re cool to come round?”   
“Totally. I just need to get changed and I’ll head over.”   
“Cool. Cool. Right, I’ll text you my address and see you in a bit.”  
We said goodbye to each other. The second I hung up, I could feel the nerves again. Oh man, how long was this going to last? Was I going to feel tense before I met him forever? I could deal with that, honestly. 

But I knew that if I put on an extra bit of make up and the jeans that made my butt look good, I would feel better. It was slightly un-PC for me to equate my confidence with the way I looked, and to feel like I had to wear make up to feel good about myself, but it was just the way I was.   
I didn’t dress up and wear tons of make up every day. But it didn’t make me any less of an independent and strong person if it make me feel better to do those things. During my residency, there was this girl who refused to wear make up or dress up or do anything that was classically ‘feminine’. And fair enough- I had no issue with that. But the thing that did annoy me, was that when she saw any other woman doing so, she acted like they were beneath her. It was as if she believed herself superior to be untouched by materialistic tendencies. She made a comment about my skills when I was putting on make up before leaving the hospital one night; saying that I should focus on my own career rather than fishing for a Doctor boyfriend. I didn’t stand for it and by the time I left the changing rooms, she knew very clearly that I believed she should keep her mouth shut.   
My abilities were not rooted in the way I looked. And my confidence was not reliant on other’s opinions. 

I was ready to go within fifteen minutes, I just had close the windows to the fire escape to ensure Guppy didn’t sneak out and do a swan dive off my balcony. Again.   
Our apartment building had a parking area in the back of the lot. I was lucky; my apartment lease came with a parking space. But to be honest, the lot was never full. There wasn’t many people who had cars this close to the city. I had bought mine a few years before, a Honda Civic. It had been used by most of my friends whenever someone was moving or someone was going on a road trip. I was fond of a day trip here and there and the car made it easy to just take off when I felt like it.   
The journey to Sonny’s wasn’t too long- barely a half hour from my neighbourhood to his. I relied entirely on the GPS in the car, just like I did most of the time when I drove outside my borough.   
I let my music blast loudly as I drove, it relaxing me. It was about half way into the route when I realised it wasn’t nerves and fear I was experiencing, it was excitement. It was anticipation.   
I parked just down the street from where the GPS said Sonny’s apartment was. I hadn’t ever stayed in Brooklyn, but one of my friends had a place in Astoria. I had been around the tourist areas in the borough, but didn’t know my way confidently round the neighbourhoods without using the maps on my phone.   
I jumped up two steps to the entrance of the building and scanned the buzzers, looking for apartment 7. I pushed the buzzer for Sonny and he answered in seconds.   
“Hello?”  
“Hey, I’m hungry and I can practically sense the amazing food from here.” I said into the speaker. He laughed from upstairs and unlocked the door.   
“Second floor, Raina.” He said whilst I opened up the door. Clutching my phone and keys, I could feel my change jingle in the back pocket of my jeans as I headed up the stairs.   
“I can hear you from here.”   
I laughed as Sonny’s voice carried round the corner of the stairwell as I travelled up the last five steps. “I walk loudly.”   
I rounded the corner to see him waiting, leaning on the open door. I hadn’t seen him in his casual clothes, just like he had only seen me in my work clothes. He was wearing a black t-shirt, the sleeves stopped in the middle of his bicep. His stretched up arm raised the hem of his top to brush just above the waistband of his jeans. His hair wasn’t as tightly combed back as it had been, the front of it had fallen from its quiff. He was hot. There was no denying it. He was muscular but lean, like I guess police officers had to be, but with broad shoulders.   
“Hey.” He smiled, leaning on one hip. “Where’s your glasses?”   
I touched my face, as if I had forgotten I hadn’t had them on. “Magical contacts.”   
Sonny nodded, his eyebrows twitch up a little with his smile. “It’s a good look. Come in.”   
“Thanks.” I grinned, moving past him into his apartment. It was warm and oh-my-god smelled amazing. “Please tell me that’s my dinner.”   
I could smell the tomatoes, the herbs and sauce immediately.   
“Yeah, it’s dinner.” He laughed, closing the door.   
"God, that smells incredible."   
"Hope it tastes that way too." he walked behind me. “What way did you come down?”

The small hallway opened up into the apartment, it was fairly open plan. I turned to my left into the kitchen area, where that incredible smell was coming from. He had the essentials with cluttered worktops where there were plates and ingredients from his cooking. Just past the kitchen worktops was a small table, big enough for two, maybe three people. It was already set with mats and glasses and cutlery, even napkins. The main attraction of the room, however, was a TV, but more the actually TV unit. The TV was in the middle of a built in unit which was completely stack full of books. There were shelves beneath, above and beside the television and they were all jam-packed with texts.  
“Uh, just straight down by the Hudson and through the Brooklyn Battrey tunnel and then up to here.” I said, distracted by the sheer volume of books. Also, why were men always interested in the route taken? “Wow. You like to read?” I raised my eyebrows, slowly stepping towards the wall. I passed the brown sofa, the one that looked soft and well used and went over to the unit to examine the books. There were textbooks and novels and autobiographies. There was a lot.   
I tipped one out of its space and tilted my head to look at the title. “‘Gotham Unbound’. ‘The Change of Hands in the Laws of Evidence.’” I read them out.   
“Law School.” Sonny leant his hands on the back of the sofa, keeping his eyes on me.   
“Oh, yeah.” I recalled, pushing the book back into its place- if it had a place, that is. “Fordham, right?” I questioned, continuing to look at the contents of the shelves.   
“Yeah. Just night school though.”   
It was impressive. “I don’t know how you do it. I mean, detective is a job and a half and then to add doing a law degree on top of that? Seriously. You should be proud.” I glanced round at him, just getting a small, slightly rosy-cheeked smile.   
“Can I get you a drink?” he asked, ignoring my soft praise.   
“Uh, just a soda. Whatever you’ve got. I’m driving, mind.” I turned back to the unit.   
“Cola or lemonade?”   
“Lemonade please.” My eyes fell on the top shelf, his collection of movies. It seemed he was quite into the classics; cop films, crime and action. “I love Indiana Jones.”   
“Huh?” he looked at me, his arm over the fridge door as he was grabbing my drink. When I held up the film, he grinned. “They’re so good.”  
“It was always James Bond that my mother liked, I think because of the whole secret agent thing, but my dad would always put on Indiana Jones. They were the best.” I put the box back.  
“Maybe we should marathon it one day.” He suggested, pouring out my soda into a glass. It was a like sneak suggestion, like a hint at him asking if I was gonna be around for a little while.   
“Sounds good. I never say no to Indiana Jones.” I put my phone on the coffee table and tucked my keys into my jacket pocket, going round to get the lemonade from him. It was cold against my palm when I took it, but his fingers that had brushed mine in our passing were warm. I took one sip of it before placing it on the coaster on the table. I shrugged out of my jacket- a black patterned satin bomber- and laid it on the back of the sofa. He had turned away to stand at the counter, cutting up bread to put on a plate.   
“Bread and pasta. Man, are you trying to destroy my body? I already went to the gym this morning, I keep eating like this and I’ll have to be there every day.” I groaned.  
“Please, you wouldn’t last a second at my parents’ house.” Sonny laughed at me, the muscles on his back moving as he cut into the bread. “They pile the plates up high.”   
I got distracted by the front of Sonny’s fridge door. It was covered with things stuck on with magnets; postcards, receipts, drawings, small photos. I gazed over them all, my attention caught by a photo near the top of the door. It was Sonny, sitting, with a baby who was maybe a month old, all pudgy and gumsy on his lap. He looked happy. Like beaming, proud, happy.   
“That’s cute.” I pointed to the photo.   
“Oh yeah, that’s my niece.” He said with pride, his eyes twinkling just looking at the picture. “It’s so weird. Like my baby sister has a baby. She’s so cute, her name is Sophia. That was only a few weeks ago, actually.”   
“Sweet.” I chuckled at the grin at his face. There was a drawing of, who I presumed was, Sonny in a suit with a really big badge. It was signed by ‘Taylor aged 5’.  
“It was a kid at work.” He explained.   
There was a part of me that ached at the knowledge he had to work with kids, because kids were the most special of victims. But I knew, even from knowing him a few days, that Sonny would be good at his job, with those kids.   
I just nodded, not really knowing what to say.   
Sonny turned back to the counter and continued to put the bread on the plate, whilst taking a swig from his beer.   
I didn’t really know what made me do it, but I took the few steps over to him and stood just to his side. I rested my hand on his back, in between his shoulder blades. Sonny turned his head quickly, surprised at my movement.   
“I didn’t actually say ‘hi’ to you.” I tilted my head with a smile.   
Sonny bit the inside of his lip but he couldn’t bite back the grin. He leant down to where my mouth was, just near his shoulder. He kissed me softly, twisting a little so he could reach me. It was just a peck; just a soft, sweet kiss but it was better than sex I had had with a few guys.   
“Hi.” I whispered.   
“Hi.” He looked smug. I don’t know why, but he did. Maybe it was just happiness.   
“Now when will my dinner be ready? This is such a tease, I’m so hungry.” I laughed.   
“Two minutes, I swear,” Sonny promised. “Sit down.”   
I did as he said and went over to the table.   
“You got a tattoo?” he questioned me.   
“I’ve got three.” I smiled, because I knew he had spotted the one at the top of my back, which meant he was watching me as I walked to the table.   
“What’s the one on your back? I didn’t notice it before.” He leaned one hand on the countertop, resting his weight on the one side.   
“It’s cause I usually have it covered by my clothes but my top’s got a lower back than usual.” I was wearing an almost identical outfit to Sonny; black jeans and a black t- shirt. Except my top had a deeper v in both the front and back with a tiny bit of a slit up both sides, not far up- just to my hip.   
“Can I look at it?”   
I laughed and nodded, sweeping my just-longer-than-shoulder-length hair out of the way. He wiped his hands on the towel and came over to stand behind me. “My mum had it.” I began to explain to stop myself from tensing when his hand brush against the bare skin at the top of my back. “Her maiden name is Diamond, and, uh, she had three sisters, so there it is.”   
The tattoo was the second one I had gotten done; the four, tiny black diamonds shapes clustered together in a square on its point. When my parents split, I started going as Diamond, just like my mum. All through high school, I was known as Raina Diamond because it was what my mother had registered me as but we never legally changed it. It never really bothered me, I never gave it much thought, except for when I went to the course-mandated therapy sessions during my psychiatric training. The therapist I saw suggested that the friction between my parents at that point and the changing of my name was representative of an inner confusion over my identity.  
I still thought about that suggestion.   
But, right that second, I was focussed entirely on Sonny’s fingertip dusting over the inking. I was almost glad when the timer went off and he went to take the food from the oven.   
The pasta he plated up looked as delicious as it smelled and, as I soon found out, tasted. It was homey, like the food we had the night before. It was something I could believe was a mother’s recipe, passed to him.   
“So good.” I groaned, as soon as I finished my third mouthful.   
“I’m glad.” He smiled at me from across the table. “So,” he took a drink from his beer, “what are your other tattoos? What one came last?”  
I reached for a slice of the bread and pulled it apart, popping a small bit in my mouth. “Well,” I said after swallowing. “I have a really small lamp post on my ankle, the outside of it. It’s from a children’s book series, you know the Chronicles of Narnia?” I continued when he nodded. “It’s just a black lamppost with a yellowy orange light. And then on my hip I have a Slaughterhouse Five quote- ‘So it goes’.”  
“Oh, Vonnegut?” he asked with a grin. “I love that book.”   
I nodded. “Yeah. I read it in high school. It was the first, like, serious literary novel I read. And I liked it, it was trippy and stuff but it wasn’t like my favourite. I actually prefer ‘Mother Night’ and ‘Hocus Pocus’ but it was the book that kind of started me reading again.”   
“You into books?”   
“When I can, yeah.” I nodded. “I read tons when I was a kid and then just kinda lessened a bit when I got to high school but Slaughterhouse put me back into it. And then I re-read it a few years into doing medicine and it just kinda stuck with me- the ‘so it goes’ thing.”  
“That stuff sucks sometimes but it has to happen.” He said.  
With a nod, I agreed. “We deal with it. We move forward. So I got the tattoo. That was my last one, a few years ago me and my boyfriend at the time were arguing and he hated tattoos so I got it right then because I kinda wanted to annoy him. I mean, I was already going to get it but I got it at the moment just to piss him off a little.”   
Studying medicine was, honestly, my first real, close encounter with mortality. People died every day in the hospitals. But we moved forward. It was human nature. 

Our dinner continued like that- just chat. The amount we had spoken about during the week, I was sure there was nothing left to say, but we kept surprising me. We kept talking. And talking. And it never got uncomfortable, there was never a second when I had to search for something to talk about.   
Sonny cleared the table after we had sat an hour after finishing our dinner. I grabbed the dish cloth but he just laughed at me.   
“Go and sit down, I’ll do this later.” He placed the plates by the side of the sink.   
“Oh, please. It’ll take us two minutes. I’m an excellent drier. I could work in a restaurant, I’m that good.” I waited for him to start washing. He shook his head at me before filling up the basin with hot soapy water. “Do you cook a lot?” I asked him as he started to scrub the pasta sauce from the first plate.   
“Honestly, with work, I don’t always have time. It’s usually take out at the office or quick meals to put in the oven whilst I’m studying. But when I’m off, I try to make something homemade. My ma goes crazy when she knows I’m eating crap all the time.” He passed me the plate and I dried it off, setting it down on the counter. “You cook?”   
“I can make dinner, but I wouldn’t say I can cook.” I surmised truthfully. “Like, I can put chicken in the oven and follow a recipe but I won’t be making my own cookbook anytime soon.”  
“Your ma cook?”   
I scoffed. “In later years. But when I was a kid, no way. She had a few things, but through school it was a right schedule. Mondays was mince and potatoes, Tuesday was spaghetti and sauce, Wednesday it was chicken, Thursdays was the delicious breakfast for dinner day, Fish Friday. We got take out on Saturdays and then we’d be at my grandparents for Sundays.” I rhymed off, still remembering the patterns. “Then she gets married and suddenly it’s a new recipe every day.”  
“Breakfast for dinner?”   
I chuckled, drying off the cutlery. “Yeah. Sometimes we had a fry up and then other times we just had cereal. It was always the night I had something on after school and she worked late so it was our thing.”   
“Every family has their traditions.” He drained the sink, having finished doing the dishes.   
“You seem like you would have picturesque ones.” I ran the towel over the pasta bake tray, glancing up at him.   
“Uh, I guess. Like my dad coming straight in from work for dinner and my ma hitting the back of our heads when we weren’t paying attention at mass.” He snorted, moving round to my other side to put the dishes away.   
“Been there.” I laughed. “We would go to midday mass on Sundays and then go to my grandparents for the afternoon and have a roast.”   
“You a church goer?” he raised an eyebrow, glancing down to me.   
I shrugged. “I was. I went to Catholic school and was raised Catholic and I still class myself as one, but maybe lapsed.”   
He didn’t say anything, just nodded. From what he had said over our time together, I got the feeling he had come from a similar, but stricter religious background.   
“I don’t know why I don’t go anymore.” I admitted. “It wasn’t a conscious decision, it just kinda fell away.”   
“I still go.” He answered my silent question. “Sundays with my family if I’m off but if not then sometime else. I... I don’t know, it helps.”   
“I get it,” I said. When he didn’t continue speaking about church, I folded up the now damp towel and left it on the worktop. I went to get my soda and took a drink, waiting for him to finish up.   
I perched on the arm of the sofa, sipping my lemonade. “So what are you doing with your day off tomorrow?”   
“I have to study.” He was leaning down, putting the plates in the cupboard. “I’ve been slacking a little this week, what with work and stuff. I’ve got a paper due in like two weeks on religion and the constitution.”   
I raised my eyebrows. The thought of going back to university to do another degree filled me with dread, I was in awe of him. “Law school sounds fun.”   
“Yeah…It’s tough but it’ll be worth it.” He took a deep breath, as if contemplating the amount of work he had put in to getting the degree, and the work he still had to do. “I hope.”  
“It will be.” I reassured, not that he had any doubts though, not really.   
He reached for another beer from the fridge and prised it open with the bottle opener. He took a quick swig before setting it down on the coffee table. “What are you doing tomorrow then?”   
“Going out for breakfast with a few of my friends.” I looked up at him as he came to stand just in front of me. “One of them, Sita, she just had a baby. Well, not just. About four months ago. And I see her all the time really, I go round to their house but she’s dying to get out of the house alone. So we promised breakfast out. But we’ll probably end up back at mine and make a day of it.”   
He nodded, arms folded, legs planted shoulder width apart. “Where are yous going?”   
“A place up in Hell’s Kitchen. We go there all the time, it’s kinda equal distance from all our houses.” I breathed out, aware of his close proximity. I bit my lip, keeping my eyes on his face. “We, uh, meet up, all four of us maybe once a month.” I wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying, not really. I was focussing on him. “And then back to work Monday.”   
“I’ve gotta, um…” Sonny spoke softly. “Do my essay and I’ll be off on Monday, I think. So, uh, I’ll have time to do my law work before. Um. I don’t really know what I’m saying anymore.”   
I almost laughed but he cut me off by leaning down to kiss me. My face heated up immediately, I could feel my cheeks colour as his lips pulled at mine. His hand took the glass of soda from mine and he pulled back to place it on the table. Freeing up my hands, I was able to clutch at his shoulders pulling him closer to me. He stooped down, kissing me deeply, stepping into the gap between my knees. Sonny’s arm wrapped around my waist, his fingers pressing against my spine.   
The tips of my fingers brushed against the ends of his hair at the nape of his neck and I started to run my fingers through his locks.   
I could feel his tongue graze my lip and I parted my lips, deepening the kiss. I heard my sigh come from my mouth as I pulled him closer to me. At that point, it was clear that the arm of his sofa wasn’t built to support us, and we toppled back onto the sofa cushions. I laughed as Sonny fell on top of me, our legs still hanging off the end of the couch.   
“Sorry.” He laughed, his breath tickling my cheek. His body was pressed flush against me, still taller even lying down.   
I couldn't help but giggle as we slid up to the top of the sofa, still curled up a little so his long legs could fit. “I don’t mind.”   
Sonny lifted himself off of me a little, moving to the side just a little. He kissed down my cheek, down to my lips again. I welcomed his kiss, tasting just a hint of the beer he had been drinking on his tongue. I wrapped my arms around his body, one draped across his shoulder and the other at the base of his back.   
My hand grazed his belt when I slipped my palm up his t shirt, feeling the smooth skin of his lower back. Just that small motion of touching his back seemed to affect the both of us. He skimmed down my waist with his hand, leaving a whisper of a touch on my thigh. I pulled my leg up, hooking it over his hip, making him elicit a soft moan against my mouth.   
We kissed and we just continued to kiss, lying against each other; making out like teenagers. The closeness with him was something I had been thinking about, even since the night at the bar when nothing had happened. But since kissing him the night before, the thoughts of him were more concrete in my mind. I had thought about him all that day, honestly.   
It felt like I was in heaven when he trailed his lips down my neck, his tongue darting out and brushing at my pulse- the pulse that I was sure was now well above normal.  
But as much as I wanted to just stay there forever, I knew that I had to get home if I had any chance of getting up to go for breakfast the next morning. Also, I knew that the longer I stayed with him on that sofa, the lower my chances were of actually leaving him that night. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to spend the night with him, it was just…maybe a tiny bit too soon.   
I felt comfortable with him and safer than ever, but it was still a new guy. I hadn’t known him a week, even if it didn’t feel like that. I needed just a little longer.  
I could hear my breath, heavier as I tried to focus on my thoughts. “I, uh, need…” I began, swallowing to try to clear my head. But his mouth was so warm, so soft but firm, sucking and nipping gently on my neck. “Um.” I took a breath. “I need to go.”   
He came back up to my lips and kissed me again. “Where?”   
I traced the neck of his t-shirt as I mumbled against his mouth. “Home.”   
“Mmm Mmm.” Sonny shook his head a little, hooking his finger in my belt loop. “Stay.”   
It was so tempting, so, so tempting. I kissed him back still, even though I knew I had to go. But it just felt so good. I felt so happy.   
And then his phone rang.   
I mumbled to him to get it but he shook his head. “I’ll get it later.” He peppered my jaw with his lips. “They’ll call back if it’s important.”   
I tilted my head back. My eyes dropped closed when he skimmed his hand over my thigh. Maybe I could stay a little longer, I thought after moving back to Sonny’s soft, supple lips. He was very, very convincing. 

But then the buzzing started again and the ringing began.   
Sonny froze up.   
“They rang back.” I mumbled against his mouth. He groaned, loudly, and reluctantly moved off of me. He stood and reached over to the coffee table, where his phone lay next to mine.   
I cleared my throat and pulled myself to sit up, dropping my feet onto the floor. This was my sign to go. I took a breath, to see if I could get the heat from my cheeks to disperse as he answered his mobile.   
“Carisi.” He said. “Yeah. They’re in my drawer. The third one. Yeah.”   
I rested my elbows on my knees, waiting for him to finish the call. The separation made me sure I was going to leave then, but I couldn’t ditch without saying goodbye.   
“No, Rollins- I gotta go. What do you mean? Cause. Cause it’s a Saturday night. Yes, I have plans.” He huffed into the phone. I almost laughed. “No, Rollins. Look, I’ll see you later. Later.”   
He turned, hands on his hip and shoved his phone into his pocket. “I’ll kill her when I see her.”   
“Someone from work?” I questioned as he sat down beside me.  
“Yeah, Rollins. She was looking for the cannolis I brought in earlier.” He shook his head, brow creased. “She calls me at nine at night to ask about freakin’ cannolis.”   
I laughed at that. What an odd office he worked in. Why was she in the office that late on a Saturday night anyway?   
We looked at each other for a second. His frown subsided, but the crease in his brow was still visible. I took in a breath and spoke.   
“I should go.” I told him, smiling when he made a face.   
“I really am gonna kill Rollins.” He shook his head. I gave a small chuckle before leaning over and leaving a kiss on his cheek.   
I stood up to get my jacket and phone. “Thanks for dinner. Seriously, it was great.” I spoke, tucking my phone into my pocket.   
“It was no problem.” Sonny ran his hand over his face and stood up, standing close to me. “Uh, gimme a text when you get home.”   
I smiled at his sweet concern. “I will.” I went towards the door, feeling his hand slip onto my shoulder, his fingers pressing softly into my skin. “Enjoy your studying.”   
“I’ll try.” He sighed, opening the door for me.   
I turned round to face him, halfway out the door. His hands came up to the curve of my neck, his thumbs stroked over my skin by the jaw. “I’ll see you this week at some point?”   
“I should have the weekend off.” Sonny smiled down at me.   
I tilted my head up for a kiss and welcomed his lips. Just for a few seconds. “I’ll see you later.”   
“Bye, Braveheart.”   
-


	4. Stay Tonight

“Sita, I’m not even sure it’ll happen tonight.” I spoke at the computer.   
Sita, my lovely, incredible, friend was on Skype. Whilst changing her darling son’s nappy.   
I mean, it was a common occurrence since she had had a baby. She wanted to be in touch with her friends, but though her husband, Tony, was a nice guy, he was also almost constantly at work. So she was almost permanently attached to Roscoe since he had been born.   
“Sure it will!” She exclaimed, not looking up to the camera as she fastened the buttons on Roscoe’s baby grow. He was gorgeous. I mean, his parents were both beautiful so there was no way he wouldn’t have been a model kid, but he was just the cutest thing. Sita was from Pakistan, and her skin was a rich caramel colour, always smooth, always silky looking. But that was to be expected since she worked for a skincare company. Roscoe had inherited his mother’s dark skin over his father’s white colouring, but he had gotten fairer hair than Sita’s pitch black mane.   
“How do you know?” I groaned. I was sitting at the breakfast bar in my kitchen, having just panic cleaned my place. It was Friday night and Sonny had finished up at work and wasn’t on call that weekend so he called me at half eight asking if I was about. I was. But at that point I was in my pyjamas watching TV with Guppy in a very, very messy apartment. I was planning on tidying it the next day but the words ‘do you want to come over’ were out of my mouth before I realised what exactly I had said.   
He said of course and guessed he would be at my place in an hour, he just had initial reports to do before he could leave.   
Cue me running round my apartment frantically tidying; throwing clothes in the laundry, moving all my confidential patient files back into my small office where they were supposed to be, doing the dishes I had left from dinner and giving the place a quick vacuum.   
I changed quickly from my PJs into jeans and a jumper but Sita insisted that I should wear the pyjamas I had bought the Sunday before when we had all met up because they were ‘cute but said I was ready to take them off at a seconds notice’. They were cute. So I pulled those on, the long-ish, grey and lemon lace jersey material shorts and matching t-shirt and yanked on my Columbia zipper too. And then I had another panic, not over my apartment but over me. 

We had met up during the week and gone to a presidential exhibition. It was at the New York Historical Society and was about all the different presidential campaigns over the last few centuries; the dramas and exposures and scandals. He knew I would be into it because we spoke about how I got weirdly into American political history when I was getting my citizenship the year before. It was great. For one I was actually interested in what we were seeing, but we also got to do something fun together, couple-y.   
We held hands and he had his arm around my shoulders and we laughed at some of the weird things in the exhibit. And then we got coffee and stayed out too late for me to not be tired the next morning at work.   
“It’s the fourth date. You always do it by the fourth date.” Sita scooped her son up and pulled the laptop closer to her. She was sitting cross legged on her bed now, Roscoe settled in her arms.   
We were talking about me sleeping with Sonny. I knew when we went out during the week that I wanted him. No holds barred. He was just sweet and kind and funny and brave and he was so passionate and eager about everything- from his work to me to coffee.   
“I know. But it’s, like, he’s really gentlemanly. You know? I don’t wanna embarrass myself and be all ‘hey I’ve got condoms and lube’ and he’s like ‘oh I’m going home’.” I chewed at my lip and clicked my phone to see if he had texted me yet.   
“I thought he was all over you last weekend?”   
“He was. I mean, we were, but I don’t know. I haven’t felt like this in ages.” I shrugged, speaking candidly.   
“Since Craig?” she raised her eyebrows.   
I shook my head at the mention of my ex. “I guess. Maybe there have been things since then but not like this. Like I can see this going on. I think. Oh god, I don’t know anymore.”  
I had sought out Sita for reassurance but I had only gotten more nervous.   
“You’ll be fine. If it doesn’t feel right, then don’t do it. Wait a little longer.” She shrugged, stroking Roscoe’s cheek. “But are you body-ready for some lovin’?”   
I made a face. “Dude, you’re a mom. It’s weird you saying that.”   
She laughed at me. “I may be a mess down there but it still works, you know.”   
“Oh my god, you’re an embarrassment. I am horrified to be friends with you.” I shook my head. And then the buzzer went.   
“Is that him?” Sita practically shouted through the screen.   
I ignored her and jumped up to go to the door. I pressed the intercom and said hello. He replied in his clear, Staten Island accent. “Hey, it’s Sonny.”  
“Sonny… Sonny? Uh are you here to deliver pizza?” I grinned.   
I could hear him laugh. “Absolutely. Part time cop, part time pizza boy.”   
“Then of course you can come in.” I unlocked the door.   
As soon as he had cleared from the intercom, I ran barefoot over to my laptop. “He’s here. I gotta go.” I went to close down the app.   
“Wait, I want to see him!” She whined loudly.   
“No!” I scolded her. “No, you weird freak. Go and watch porn if you’re that desperate.”   
“Be safe!” she yelled before I could close it down. I shut the laptop and tucked it onto the shelf under my coffee table. Guppy was winding round my legs as I gave a last glance around the place to make sure it was presentable enough before going to the door to unlock it. I was entirely aware that this was the first time he was going to see my place, and that made me a tiny bit on edge. 

My apartment was my space. It was an extension of myself. I loved having my friends over, and their kids and their partners, but it took me a while to feel comfortable with having someone there. Since I had lived alone, my apartment was my solace. It took me months to decorate it and it was perfectly how I wanted it; very open plan, very clean colours, very cosy.   
Sonny knocked on the door and I opened it up instantly, stopping myself from flinging it open to welcome him.  
He was wearing his suit, stone grey trousers and jacket with a black waistcoat and blue shirt. He looked so put together, so smart and…hot. It took me a second to respond to his greeting.   
“Wow.” I raised my eyebrows at him.   
He looked at me in confusion.   
“You look great.” I said honestly. I was still staring at him, his broadness of his shoulders and the tapering of his body, when he laughed and ducked his head. I stepped back to invite him inside. “Hi, by the way. But you look so cool.”   
“You’re so cute.” He shook his head, crossed over the doorway and inside. He stopped in front of me.   
“How?” I looked down at myself, hiding my pleased face that he thought that.   
“Look at you, you look so cosy.” Sonny grinned at me, dimples apparent in his cheeks, making him look somewhat childlike. “Are those your pyjamas?”   
I crinkled my nose at him. “Yeah. I went to the salon after work today with my friend, Bev, who works with me. We got pedicures and stuff so I took a shower when I got home to get rid of all the lotion.”   
That was true. Bev had insisted commandeering my waxing appointment and made it into a more pampering evening with pedicures and, weirdly, ice cream. When I got home I sloughed off the excess wax left on my body in the shower but put on a tiny bit of make up to go to run some errands after I scoffed my dinner.   
Sonny touched at my chin and tipped my face up for him to kiss. We were grinning, both of us, laughing in the kiss as I slipped my arms around his waist. The bottom of my forearm brushed against coldness and pulled my lips away to glance down at his hip where his gun was holstered. He noticed my two second stare at the piece.   
“I’ll take it off.” He took a step back, away from me, and fiddled with the holster for a second before pulling it from his belt. “Not into guns?”   
I swallowed, hard. I didn’t really know how to answer the question. “Um. I just, I’m not used to them.” I shook my head. “We don’t have them at home obviously and I still kinda get a fright when I see people with them. But I don’t have an issue with them, like. My old boyfriend had one and he wanted me to feel comfortable with it so we went a gun range and it was okay. But I… I don’t know.”   
I was fine with having one in my place, it didn’t bother me, it was just that I personally didn’t want to own one. I didn’t want that responsibility on me. And, I had found, that American’s had strong opinions on guns- on both sides. I preferred to stay out of the discussion. 

“Here.” I took his jacket from his hands and opened up the closet to the side of the door. I kept all my jackets, boots, brooms, vacuums, miscellaneous outdoorsy things in there. I hooked the jacket up in the cupboard, moving to let him tuck the gun into the pocket. “Is this an early finish or a late one?” I asked him, moving from the gun topic.   
“Eh. For a Friday night, an early one.” He shrugged, unbuttoning his sleeves. “Normally it’s just getting started at this time. But we had a pretty long drawn out child abuse case and we were doing custody stuff. This kid is totally ignored at home, at school, everywhere. Not washed in weeks, barely being fed, but we still can’t just take the kid away.”   
“God.” I grimaced at the thought. “You gotta go through the courts and DCS and all that, right?”   
“Yeah,” he grumbled. “A lotta politics. You’ll get that too, right?”   
“Uh, yeah.” I sighed, thinking of all the time I had wasted in meetings and courtrooms and mediations over patients’ custody battles and responsibility hearings. It was ten times worse when in the adolescent wards. “Reports and reports and reports.”   
“Yeah. Paperwork kills me.” he groaned.   
“Can I get you a drink before you kill yourself over paperwork?” I headed for the kitchen.   
My kitchen was across from the door to the apartment. It was small in comparison to the rest of the place, but it had the essentials and more; fridge freezer, sink, oven, hob, slim line dishwasher and a decent amount of storage with a breakfast bar jutting out in a sort of separation between the kitchen area and the living room.   
“Yeah, what do you got?” He followed me towards the kitchen.   
“A lot.” I opened up one of the cupboards where I kept the drinks. Gin, rum, brandy, whisky, vodka- I had it all. “And I’ve got wine and beer and cider in the fridge if you want any of that?”   
“You starting a speakeasy, Braveheart?” he raised his eyebrows at the cacophony of bottles.   
“Yeah. I mean, if the medicine thing falls apart, I have back up,” I shrugged.   
“It’s good to plan.” He leant his elbows on the breakfast bar, watching me. “I’ll take a beer, thanks, Raina.”   
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up when he said my name. Just the way he said it, it made me feel warm inside. I leant into the fridge and grabbed a cider for myself along with his beer. I opened the two caps and passed him his which he took a swig from immediately. 

I dimpled my lip with my tooth, tensing as I watched him survey my apartment.   
“Your place is amazing.” He straightened up, looking around the place.  
“Thank you.” I smiled. “Living room, kitchen, bathroom, then through there is my office and my bedroom.”   
“Have you got a mini basketball hoop?” he caught sight of the plastic stand beside the armchair in my office and went to look at it.   
“Uh, yeah.” It was a kind of odd thing to have in an otherwise almost professional environment. “It’s kinda satisfying.” I gestured to the trashcan beneath the hoop that was half full of crumpled up bits of paper.   
“I need to get one. For serious, law enforcement reasons of course.”   
“Of course.” I leant against the wall as he glanced around the room, taking in my desk and chair and general office equipment. And then he did a double take.   
“Is that a dartboard?” he pushed the door half closed so he could see the back of it.   
I said *almost* professional environment.   
“Kind of. Like, it’s a magnetic one, not a real one.” I half grimaced, half smiled. “I figured it was slightly dangerous to have them about the cat.”   
“And…who’s the guy on the board?” his eyebrows raised, looking just a little concerned.   
I made a face. “Well. It’s a long story.”   
“If you’re a stalker, I’d like to know now.” He leant against the wall, his hand beside my shoulder and hip pressed out.   
I laughed, elbowing his stomach. “I’m not. It’s… So I met this guy, like a few years ago. That guy.” I gestured to the moody black and white photograph of the brooding guy. He had a dark beard and was staring at the camera with folded arms. “He walked into me at the hospital and it was, like, a meet cute. And he asked me out for a drink and then we had a lot of drinks. And I was okay with hooking up with him, but he was insistent on coming to mine, which was a little weird but I went with it. I woke up and he was in here looking through my files.” I thought back to coming through to see him rifling through my things. I flew at him and kneed his balls, making him double over before chucking him out. “He was a reporter and he was looking for information on a patient I was assisting on. She was slightly well know, but she was in detox. I didn’t even have her files.”   
He was staring at me in disbelief, as if in shock that someone would have actually done that. “Are you serious? That’s evil.”   
I nodded, smiling. “Yup. And I was pissed, obviously, so my friends printed that off for me and popped it up there to vent at. Just haven’t taken it down.” I chewed my cheek. “Like, I felt pretty much violated. He had totally used me. And he tried to get me to go down on him. Glad that didn’t happen.”   
He laughed loudly at what I had said.   
“So, if you turn out to be just a cop using me to get access to files on a suspect, I’ll cut off your ear, my friend.”   
He leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “I wouldn’t dare.”   
I could feel my skin on fire from where he had kissed me as we left the office. He seemed oblivious.

“What’s your view like?” he asked before going over to the almost ceiling to floor window on the complete opposite side to the door. “Wow.”   
The window of my living room looked out over a row of river side shops and onto the Hudson River. On a clear night, the sun set beautifully and you could see all the way out to New Jersey.   
“How long did you say you’ve lived here?” he glanced over his shoulder to me.   
I clunked my bottle of cider onto my dining table. “Almost two years. I moved in just after Thanksgiving.” I had forced my friends to help me move in the weekend after Thanksgiving, but had rewarded them with free food after we had gotten everything up the few flights of stairs. I mean, I didn’t have a sofa at the time, but the floor was fine to eat pizza on.   
“You rent?” he asked.   
“Jesus, yeah. Christ, no way I could have afforded to buy two years ago. Even now, I can’t afford to buy. But my landlady is really nice. She lives across in Hoboken; she hasn’t moved from there since she bought her house thirty years ago. So I think I’ll be here for a while.” I stuck my hands in hoodie pocket, looking out the window with him. “Sometimes I sit out on the fire escape, especially around Fourth of July because you can see any fireworks that are set off along the river,” I said. There were two rickety patio chairs with a small table out there. “I had a dire cold this New Years so I didn’t go out. So Sita, who was pregnant and couldn’t go out anywhere, came over and we wore big jackets and three layers of clothes and wrapped ourselves in blankets and just sat out watching the fireworks at midnight and eating chocolate. One of the best New Years I’ve had here, I think.”   
“Sounds like a good night.” He smiled. We stared for just a second out to the darkness of outside, but Guppy, it seemed, felt neglected. She brushed against my calf, her tail snaking around my leg and meowed loudly.   
“Ah, the catfish.” Sonny looked down at the black creature at my feet.   
I laughed and scooped Guppy up. “Yeah. This is her. I mean, she’s needy as fuck for a cat.”   
“I’m more of a dog person, honestly, but she’s cute.” Sonny reached his hand out a stroked the top of the cat’s head. Guppy rolled her neck before wriggling and jumping from my arms to go to sit on her perch, just to the right of the window.   
“So am I. But I’m away long days sometimes and it’s not fair to leave a dog that long. I got lucky with this one, she’s happy to be on her own but loves the attention when I’m home.” I grabbed my bottle from the table and headed over for the couch. I tucked my feet under myself and sat, leaning on the arm of the sofa.   
He joined me, sitting on the other end of the sofa, granted it was only a three person one, so both of us stretched out took up most of the space.   
Sonny sat, always, like a guy. Long limbs made him do it, I think. He kept his feet planted apart and his knees separated with his arms resting on his legs.  
“I was thinking we could watch a film. I’ve got popcorn in the cupboard.” I suggested as the comfortable silence fell between us.   
He nodded and asked what I had in mind; triggering a twenty five minute trawl through my DVDs and Netflix accounts to find something. We had narrowed it down to five, and then jumped straight to three, then two before finally settling on Argo.   
Sonny volunteered to get the popcorn ready whilst I put in the film to watch.   
“You got a big bowl?” he asked me. I turned round and pointed him to a cupboard under the microwave. “Got it.”   
I rested my chin on the back of the sofa, watching him move, lean on the counter to wait for the popcorn to finish popping. Over the course of the day, Sonny’s shirt had risen to become almost untucked from his trousers, it was well fitted but just a little baggy. Though he had taken his gun off, he had kept on his badge. It was hooked onto his belt buckle, glinting under the lights of my kitchen.   
“Have you seen this before?” He turned towards me. My eyes jumped from his body to his face, trying not to blush as I was sure he had seen me watching him.   
“Yeah, of course. It’s intense. It takes a while to get going and then it’s like edge of your seat kinda action.” I told him just as the microwave beeped. He emptied the contents of the salted popcorn bag into the bowl and came over to me.   
“So I’m going to be blown away by it?” he settled back in his place on the sofa.   
“Well, I liked it.” I shrugged, reached for some popcorn and tossed it into my mouth. Tucking my chin into the neck of my hoodie, I said, “It’s intense as hell.” I pressed play, getting cosy in my position on the sofa. “Are you warm enough? I have, like, two hundred blankets in the closet if you want one.”  
He looked over at me, eyes confident as he spoke. “Come over here. You’ll keep me warm.” His smirk was funny, but endearing at the same time.   
I pressed my lips together tightly to avoid showing my teeth in my silly grin. His arm was outstretched over the back of the sofa. I pushed myself up and softly fell against his side, in the crook of his arm. I tucked my feet under myself, feeling happy when he moved his hand onto my shoulder to rest. His body was warm against my side.   
I was so glad I had seen the film before, because I could not focus on it when he was so close to me. Every breath he took and the subsequent movement of his chest soothed but excited me. Every time he tightened his grip on my shoulder, my heart doubled over. Every time I reached for popcorn from the bowl that was balanced carefully on his thigh, I tensed.   
He didn’t seem to notice. In fact his face had hardly come away from the TV since the film began. We were beyond a half hour into the movie when I got up to get more drinks.  
I set down the two bottles next to the half empty bowl of popcorn on the coffee table before going to sit down again, feeling a little cooler since going to the fridge.   
“Oh, your tattoo.” He caught a glance of my lamp post of my ankle, the black stood out brashly against my pale skin. I looked down for some reason, as if surprised that it was there, despite the fact it was inked onto me over ten years ago.   
“Yup,” I smiled as he tilted his head to see it a little more.   
“Can I look at it?” he asked me.   
“You’re a little odd, Sonny.” I laughed and sat down, back nearer to the other end of the sofa, leaning back on the cushions supported up by the arm of the seat. I propped my foot up, twisting my ankle so he could see the ink on the outside of my right leg.   
When his fingers wrapped around my ankle, I tensed my muscles unconsciously. The feeling of his hand on my bare skin almost made me elicit a gasp but I suppressed it. He ran his fingertip over the line of the lamppost, brushing the orange light at the top, about three inches from the bend of my ankle.   
“You’ve got really soft skin.” He spoke quietly.   
I smiled, pointing my toes. “I told you, I was at the salon today.”   
In that moment, I was especially grateful for Selene, my beautician, for the close wax she had done. My gratitude only blossomed when he grazed my shin with the palm of his hand.   
It was nothing. Sonny touching my leg, my ankle, my shin was nothing but it felt like everything. I had slept with guys who hadn’t made me feel the way he could make me feel just by touching my skin.   
I saw the corners of his lips twitch up just a little bit when the goose bumps appeared along my leg. Part of me wanted to kick him for being smug but I ignored it. Instead, I watched him continue to rub at my ankle, as if massaging my muscles, but a lot softer.   
“So that’s two tattoos that I’ve seen.” Sonny commented, hands still moving against my skin.   
“For someone without any tattoos, you’re very interested.” I laughed, biting the inside of my cheek.   
“I…I don’t know. It interests me that you’re this proper, professional doctor and then you’ve got tattoos. It’s unexpected. I like it.” He admitted with a small shrug. “Is that weird?”   
I smiled, still biting the inside of my cheek. “Kinda hot.”   
He grinned, shaking his head just a little bit. “What about your last tattoo?”   
“What about it?” I asked him, knowing easily what he was asking.   
“The Kurt Vonnegut tattoo is an interesting one.” He said, almost innocently.   
I nodded, laughing quietly. “It is an interesting one.”   
A half groan, half laugh came from his mouth and his fingers pressed a little firmer on my leg. “Can I see it?”   
I swallowed, pushing down any nervousness with the lump in my throat. He is going to stay tonight, I thought to myself. I was sure of it. I was so sure of the fact that I didn’t feel any embarrassment or worry over him touching me, kissing me.   
“If you can find it.” My eyebrows raised just a little, the movement nudged my glasses up my nose a bit.   
I think that was the first time that evening I had thrown him. His mouth parted and I watched his Adams Apple bob in his neck as he swallowed. Hard.   
But he was only thrown for a few seconds. I saw the composure, the cheekiness visibly return to his expression. “You’ve obviously forgotten that I’m a detective.”   
I pursed my lips, restricting the grin from spreading across my face and slid down a tiny bit on the sofa.   
Within seconds, his hands were skimming up my leg. From there he moved, slower, over my thigh. His hands were soft, but he seemed to know exactly where my tattoo was situated. He had moved, instantly to my left leg, away from the lamppost on my right ankle.   
He pulled my body closer to him, leaning over me. I took in a breath when his fingertips reached the hem of my shorts. He heard me and glanced up, as if checking – double checking- that I was okay with it. I raised my eyebrow just a tiny bit in way of consent.   
He brushed the bottom of my shorts up, his long fingers skimmed over the soft blonde hair at the top of my legs, ignored the veins and the singular childhood scar that sat on the surface of my skin.  
I could almost feel his hot breath against my thigh, he was moving so close to me.   
When the bottom of the tattoo came into view, he followed the ink markings, moving further up my leg until he reached the black lace of my panty line. He stopped there.   
I breathed in when he stopped, half wishing he had continued. I pulled up my hoodie, just a tiny bit to show the top of my hip, the other side of my waistband. “Like it?” I asked him, my voice a little croaky because my throat had practically dried up.   
“Love it.” He whispered up to me, barely looking at my tattoo.   
I sat up, moving him away from my leg and kissed him. I had had enough of waiting. I had had enough of soft, slightly teasing, touches. I had had enough of ignoring the heat on my skin.   
He reacted, immediately, to my kiss and moved his lips against mine. We had barely connected for two seconds when he hooked his arms around my waist and pulled me on top of him. I slid my leg off of his lap and onto the other side of his leg, so I was practically sitting on his lap, stomachs flush against each other.   
We were both holding onto the other so tightly; my arms around his neck and shoulders, and his arms firmly around my waist.   
This wasn’t like when we kissed on the sofa at his place. This was more immediate, desperate. Teeth nipped, tongues moved, lips crushed. I lost my breath and found it again a hundred times in the space of a few minutes. There was no slowness between us anymore, there was no waiting. It was urgent.   
Sonny pulled at the bottom of my hoodie and tugged it up, trying to pull it off of me. I took my arms out and separated myself from his lips to yank it over my head. In tossing it onto the floor, I had turned my head away from Sonny. I heard him laugh.   
“‘Wanna avocuddle?’” He read the slogan of my pyjama top out loud.   
I looked down to see the words emblazoned on my chest with two avocados on either side of the print. There were tiny avocados on my shorts too. “They’re cute!” I insisted, swatting his shoulder.   
“They are.” He laughed, pulling my face towards him. “They sure are.”   
Softly, he pecked my lips, glancing up to me. I could practically see my reflection in his blue eyes. I brushed my nose against his, running my hands over his shoulders. His palms moved up my thighs and settled on my ass, rubbing at any of my bare skin he could touch.   
We were practically matching each other’s breaths: faster than usual, harder the usual, deeper than usual. I kissed him softly for a second before pulling back, still panting.   
“Do you wanna…stay tonight?” I whispered to him, my chest moving up and down in line with my heavy breaths.   
Sonny smiled, pulling my hips closer to him slightly and nodded. “Yeah. If you want me to, obviously.”   
The SVU side of him was always there. Although he was…proactive with me, he was always double, triple checking that I was okay, that I was comfortable with what we were doing. I guess he had seen so many cases of dubious consent or blurred lines that he was extra careful with his own relationships.  
I slid my hands down his arms and pulled his hands away from my body. His smile faltered and brow tensed in slight disappointment but understanding. “Come on.” I stepped back, off of his body and pulled him up from the couch. I switched off the TV and took a step towards my bedroom.  
His grin came back. “I thought you were kicking me out there.” Sonny moved his hands from mine and back onto my body as we manoeuvred around the coffee table to my bedroom.  
“Nah.” I reached up on my tiptoes to pepper kisses on his jaw, relishing the feeling of his hands on the curve of my butt, my hip, grazing my bare skin. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”   
He laughed softly as I turned us round and pushed him to sit on the side of the bed. A yowl made Sonny jump up knocking into me.   
“Hey.” I groaned at Guppy. I pulled the grumpy cat up and nudged her off of the bed. She leapt down and scampered out to the living room. “Sorry.” I rubbed the back of my neck, biting down on my lip.   
He shook his head and sat down fully this time, pulling at my t shirt to get me to come closer to him. My teeth let go of my lip and I smiled, sliding my arms around his neck. Sonny pushed himself back on the bed a bit and pulled me onto his lap.   
Sonny’s hands felt at home on my body, just like my lips felt against his. I hadn’t been this close with someone- emotionally I mean- in years. And the fact that we seemed, so far, to be physically in tune gave me body wide goose bumps.   
My thighs clenched around his hips as I kissed down his chin, to his neck. I let my tongue graze his skin, feeling the strong pulse beneath.   
“Uh, Raina.” Sonny spoke, strained.   
“Mmm?” I didn’t stop my kisses.   
“Your cat is staring at me.”  
I turned around, holding onto his shoulder for balance as I looked into the living room. She was. Guppy was perched on the arm of the sofa staring straight into my bedroom, eyes stuck on Sonny. I groaned and got up away from Sonny. “My god, cat, I will sell you to the Vietnamese restaurant.” I muttered and went into the living room. I scooped her up and set her down in her bed by the window. I narrowed my eyes at her and she tilted her head. “Do not taunt me.”   
After a second, I realised I was acting like a crazy person and that Sonny would a hundred percent be able to hear me.   
I went back to my bedroom and this time, I closed the door behind me. Sonny had kicked off his shoes but had left the bed to close over the curtains of my window. I clicked on the bedside lamp to offer a more faded light than the overhead one. It was also slightly less harsh and slightly more flattering than the white lights on my ceiling.   
I wasn’t skinny. I wasn’t body perfect, I knew that. But I also wasn’t bothered by it anymore. I had hated parts of me through my teens but it had fallen away when I got into my twenties. I was healthy- I worked out but I fucking loved food and going out for drinks. I was splattered in scars from childhood sports and workplace injuries. I was covered in stretchmarks from where I had grown too quickly during puberty. I had gone from a kid’s body to an adult’s in, what felt like, days and my skin had stretched to accommodate the great growth in my breast and hips. I was always curvy, soft. My thighs were thick, just like my ass and my stomach and chest and arms. But I was happy with it.   
Despite my relatively high body esteem, I did prefer to avoid bright lights when stripping off in front of a guy for the first time.   
I climbed onto my bed, kneeling up, and moved over to the opposite side, closer to where Sonny stood. I watched him swallow, nervous for a second and then came over to me. Both of us reached out our hands. His went to my waist and mine to his chest.   
We kissed and my fingers worked quickly, but not rushed, unbuttoning his shirt. I pulled the material out from the waistband of his trousers until the shirt was open. I skimmed my fingers down his torso, feeling the firm muscles beneath his soft, porcelain skin. I could tell that his body was toned more than muscular, despite feeling his strength when he hugged me in a crushing hold. I pushed the shirt from his shoulders and he pulled his hands away from me to let it fall to the floor at his feet.   
I couldn’t keep my hands off of him, even as I kissed every part of his upper body, right down to the soft trail of hair that ran down his navel and disappeared under the waistband of his smart trousers.   
His fingers ran through my hair; the soft curls I had styled that morning had almost completely fallen away, making it easy for him to rake his hands through.   
I undid his belt and the clanged as it fell away, leaving me to unbutton the top of his trousers, kissing my way to his boxers.  
“Mm.” he croaked. “Come here.”   
His hands went to my elbows and he pulled me up, level to his face. “I just want you.” He kissed me, grasping the bottom of my top. I didn’t resist when he tugged the top up, over my stomach, passed my breasts and over my head. The neck of my top mussed my hair as he pulled it off and tossed it away. He pulled me flush against body. I could feel the wet marks on his body that I had left with my tongue when I had kissed him.   
With one hand, I pulled back the covers on my bed just as I felt his hands go to the clasp of my black bra. He unclasped it and the straps fell down my shoulders. I pushed them down my arms and let him pull the bra away from my body.   
At that point, my legs were like jelly. My muscles were giving in because of what his hands, his lips, his mouth were doing to my body. I lay back, pulling him on top of me. We kicked the covers down so we could tuck ourselves under them.   
We kissed, heatedly but not rushed, never rushed. My skin was hot, my brain was a little fuzzy and my heart was hammering.   
“Do you have anything?” Sonny murmured, his mouth against my stomach as he threw my pyjama shorts on the floor. “I didn’t…”  
I would have remembered to use a condom eventually but his question did pull me into reality. “Uh. Yeah.” I rolled over to reach into my bedside table. Sonny moved so I could slide out from under him.   
He was kicking his trousers off whilst I rummaged in the drawer.   
I found the box, almost full in my drawer. It had been a while since I had invited any of the guys I had been with into my place. But I didn’t feel that way with Sonny. I didn’t feel the slightest bit of unease, especially when he was kissing the base of my back as he waited for me to give him the condom.   
“How’s that?” I handed it to him. He glanced down for a second to look at the packet before nodding.   
“Yeah, should be fine.”   
I pulled him back on top of me with a grin and hooked my legs around his. I dragged my hand down his broad back and felt the bumps of his spine against my fingertips.   
“Is this okay?” Sonny whispered, mouth hot against my chest.   
I pulled myself closer and closer to him. “This is perfect.”   
-  
The blue sheets of my bed were pulled up over my body. I lay, happily sleepy, on my side, facing away from the door. I heard the heavy footsteps of Sonny approach my bedroom. He came round to the empty side of the bed and dropped himself onto the mattress. I laughed as we shook from the bounce of the springs.   
He slid under the sheets and reached out for me. His hands were cold from him having just washed them as one slid around my hip to pull me closer.   
“Hey, you put clothes on.” Sonny whined at me, brow creased. I laughed and put my hands to his face, touching the steeping lines on his forehead from when he scowled at me. His hair had become mussed, unrestrained by the gel, from the amount of times I had ran my hands through it, gripped it, pulled at it.  
“It’s hardly a suit, Sonny. I put on my shorts and a bra.” I whispered, sliding my legs between his.   
We had both cleaned up in the bathroom across from my kitchen, separately. I had wrapped a blanket around me to shuffle over to the bathroom whilst he lay in bed for a few moments. He pulled on his boxers when I came back before swapping places with me.   
He kissed my wrist softly. “Anything is worse than you wearing nothing.”   
Again, I breathed a soft laugh. “I think you’ll find you’re wearing boxers too.”   
“Yeah, cause I didn’t want to walk across your place naked when I’m not too sure if your cat likes me,” he raised his eyebrows.   
“She’ll warm up.”   
He looked dubious and reached back to switch on the lamp on his side of the bed. I squinted at the relative brightness and squeezed my eyes closed, cringing away from it. I pushed my glasses up my nose, moving away from him a little.   
“Can you turn that off?” I motioned to the light. He move quickly and clicked it off.   
“Are you okay?” he sat up, looking down at me in concern.   
“I’m fine.” I blinked a few times. “I just…I have really crappy sight. And I sometimes get really sensitive to light and get headaches.”  
“How come?”  
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just something that happens. I have like six pairs of sunglasses for whenever there’s the slightest bit of sunshine. I just need a few minutes to adjust. And when I’m on call, it takes me, like, five minutes to adjust to the hospital lights when I’m coming in from the dark.”   
He frowned down at me but I just smiled and pulled him to lie back down. The pain in my head subsided and I set my head down onto my pillow, tucking my arm beneath it.   
We lay for a few moments in silence before Sonny spoke to me again. “Was that okay? What we did? Are you alright?”   
I smiled at his questions, biting my lip at his concern. “Yeah. I’m more than happy with everything. It was good.”   
A grin burst from his concerned face and he agreed with me. His hands found my body again and I closed my eyes as he rubbed up and down my side, softly.   
“Are you working tomorrow?” I whispered with closed eyes.   
“No. I can stay for a while. We could grab breakfast or something. Go out.” He suggested.   
I nodded. “You know, I think I’ve gone out for breakfast more times in the last few years than I ever did in the whole of my life. It’s like a really grown up, American thing to do.”   
I felt his breath over my face when he laughed. “I guess. Where’s good around here?”   
With a purse of my lips I told him the places I had gone. Which was quite extensive, honestly. “I must have gone to about twelve different places with a guy I dated and I think I’ve tried every combination of pancakes in existence.”  
“Is it the same boyfriend?” he watched me.   
What? In confusion I turned my head to look at him. He was propping his head up on the heel of his hand, an entirely neutral expression on his face.   
“Huh?” I questioned.   
“The guy. The boyfriend who you went to when your roommate was tattooing the pigs ear, and who you fought with before you got the Vonnegut tattoo and who has the gun and took you to the shooting range.” He listed the things I had told him over the course of the short time I had known him. “Is it the same guy? An old boyfriend?”   
“What- are you writing down everything I say, Detective?” I felt a little irked at his question, but also a little reluctant to hear or talk about the subject. Heat prickled on my skin regardless.   
Sonny laughed a little, tilting his head back. “No. I’m just a good listener.”   
I sighed and rolled my neck, groaning a little bit. “I’m not gonna talk about exes right now, Sonny.”   
He clutched at me a little tighter, looking a little bit panicked. “No, I- I wasn’t going into that, Raina, I was just wondering if it was the same guy.”   
I shook my head. “Yeah. But can we leave this topic for another day, please.” I slid down the bed a little bit, moving closer to him. His hand slid from my side to my back and he reciprocated, holding me against him.   
“Absolutely.” He whispered. “I’m sorry.”   
Glad that I had postponed that chat for another time, I kissed him.   
We kissed lazily and slowly. It wasn’t even midnight when we fell asleep. I hadn’t felt happier.


	5. Hospital Run-In

I crunched on the salad, listening to Bev talk about the latest drama in her impending nuptials. It seemed that the sister of her husband to be was causing issues with the wedding plans.   
“She wants three plus ones.” Bev wiped the mayonnaise from her finger with the napkin and tossed it down onto the table.   
“So she wants a plus three.” I swallowed the lettuce, smiling at my joke that she didn’t find as hilarious as I did. “Sorry.” 

I let her continue venting about it whilst eating my lunch. We were in the atrium of the hospital having left the department for our lunch break. The cafés in the hospital were actually really good, although that may not transfer onto the actual hospital food for patients.   
I was listening to Bev, I really was, but I was also running over what I had to do when I went back upstairs to the ward. I had three appointments and a telephone conference to discuss a patient’s care plan upon release and then my mid-week round up with the other doctors on my ward.   
“I don’t know, I’ll just have to deal with it. I mean, he’s dealing with my family so it’s gotta work both ways.” She mumbled. I didn’t even have to say anything, just talking it over got her to work through it. Honestly, that was a large part of my job. In the therapy side of my work, I listened and commented on things they maybe hadn’t noticed themselves. That was all that was necessary on a basic level. 

“How was your sister’s birthday? Did you call her?” Bev questioned, obviously satisfied with her rant being finished.   
I swallowed my mouthful of salad and wobbled my head from side to side. “She seemed happy enough. I mean, I don’t really think my being there would have impacted her birthday celebrations either way.”  
“She get her present?”   
I nodded. I had ordered a dress for her and a handbag that just got delivered to their house. She told me she loved it, which I was thankful for. “She sent me a picture of her wearing it when she went for dinner with friends. She looked cute.”   
And she had. We had talked on the phone for twenty minutes the day of her birthday, she detailed to me all the gifts she got and what happened at school and how the guy she liked bought her a cupcake and said happy birthday. I loved hearing about it all, it made me feel like I was home.   
I sipped my coffee and glanced around the atrium.   
And then my attention got caught on two people walking through the doors. I tilted my chin up to get a better look at who I thought it was. 

“No way.” I whispered, seeing Sonny stride into the main area of the reception.   
He was walking and talking, and then he stopped and was looking down to the blonde that walked with him. She was petite, her black jacket pulled tight around her. For a second, I felt a tinge of jealousy but it dissipated quickly when I saw him laugh. I couldn’t feel anything bad when he laughed.   
“What is it?” Bev turned round, straining her neck to see what I was looking at.   
“That’s Sonny!” I motioned towards him, not sure whether to duck or go over.   
She raised her eyebrows. “Your Sonny?”  
I nodded. “Yeah. He must be here for work.”   
“Are you going to talk to him?” Bev turned back to me, leaning over the table to me, grinning widely.   
I made a soft noise in uncertainty. “Uh. I haven’t met any of the people he works with.”   
“So meet one now. Go! Jesus, you let the guy go down on you but you won’t even greet him when he comes to your work. You’re a weirdo.” She tutted at me, digging back into her sandwich.   
I pressed my foot on top of hers and she yelped, more in surprise than in pain. But I stood up anyway and headed out of the café area and into the wider floor of the atrium. 

My heels clicked on the hard floor as I walked. I could feel the navy material of my shin length skirt brush against my skin. Unconsciously, I ran my fingers through the front of my dark copper hair in an attempt to make myself slightly more presentable.   
It was Wednesday now. He had spent most of the weekend at my place. He went back to his place late on Saturday morning after we had destroyed a breakfast at a diner a few blocks between my apartment and the subway stop he needed.   
We both had things to do; I had some errands and a tiny bit of work while he had to study and do a little bit of law school assignments. He came back to mine and we ordered Chinese food and put on a film that we didn’t watch. He left again on Sunday afternoon with the plan to go to the movies on Saturday night. We both had things on during the week, there was no time to see each other.   
“Sonny!” I called when I was just a few feet away from the pair, still deep in conversation. Sonny’s hands were waving wildly, as if he was trying to argue his point but the sound of his name stopped his movements and he turned his head towards me.   
I mirrored his grin when he saw me and moved away from the blonde. I didn’t really know how he was going to greet me, not in front of his colleague, but he didn’t seem put off, even slightly. His arm extended and I stepped forward, letting his hand slip onto my back. I could feel the heat of his hand through my thin black top when he leant down and kissed my forehead.   
“Hey. How are you?” he asked, stepping back a little to look at me.   
I smiled up at him. “I’m good. Are you guys here for work?” I glanced towards his partner. From where I was standing I could tell she was pregnant. Like, quite pregnant. The dark purple top she wore was stretched over her tummy, partly hidden by the drape of her jacket.   
“Uh, yeah. Raina, this is my partner, Amanda Rollins.” He gestured to the woman next to him. She was short, but anyone seemed short next to him, and had pixie like features to match her blonde hair. She stretched her hand out with a smile. “Rollins, this is my girlfriend.”   
My hand was already outstretched when I heard what he said. I faltered for a half second, staring at the side of his face in a mist of shock.   
Girlfriend.   
I don’t know why the word gave my stomach a bit of a twist and my skin erupted in heat but it did.   
I regained my composure almost instantly and smiled at Amanda. “Nice to meet you.”   
“You too.” She said slowly, eyes trailing a little between mine and Sonny’s faces. “Uh, I’ve heard a lot about you.”  
I swallowed and let go of her hand, smoothing my skirt. I couldn’t really think of what to say. His ‘girlfriend’ label had thrown me and part of me wished I hadn’t left my seat.

After a second, I spoke again. “So, are you looking for a specific department?”   
“Yeah.” Sonny dug into his jacket pocket for the card. “Uh a Doctor Williams? Neuropsychology.”   
I frowned and looked at the card. “Hank Williams?” I read from it.   
“Yeah. You know him?” Amanda stepped forward a little in curiosity.   
“Not really.” I shook my head, speaking honestly. “I know who he is but he retired, like, eight, maybe nine months ago. One of the other Doctors in my department knew him, they went to his retirement do.”   
“So he doesn’t work here anymore?” Sonny raised his eyebrows, just as his phone started buzzing in his pocket.   
“No, but the people in neuropsych will be able to tell you more, maybe give you an address or something.” I shrugged in an attempt to be helpful.   
Sonny nodded and looked at his phone before excusing himself and moving a few steps away to answer it. 

“So.” Amanda said, bringing my attention over to her. “You’ve made quite an impression on Carisi there, Raina.”   
With a breath, I smiled with raised eyebrows. “Mm, maybe.”   
She gave a half chuckle half sigh. “He never mentioned anything about a girlfriend thing, did he?”   
I swallowed, glancing over to him before shaking my head. “No.”  
“Of course not.” She rolled her eyes at her partner.   
“Not that I have an issue with it, it was just a bit of a surprise to be called that.” My fingers went up to my necklace and I twisted the cheap costume jewellery around.   
“Look, Carisi is great, but, uh, he’s eager and I get that he can be a little intense.” Amanda’s voice was hushed as she talked. “Just talk to him, god knows he likes to chat.”   
I laughed at that. “Yeah. Yeah, he does.”   
I didn’t know how appropriate it was to be discussing him with his workmate but she made me feel at ease, which, I guessed, made her very good at her job.   
I straightened up a little, moving away from discussions on Sonny. “How far along are you?”   
“Almost 31 weeks.” She distractedly rubbed her hand over her bump and smiled.   
Sonny hadn’t told me much about his co-workers, except from small details. It was like he told me every small thing but failed to mention bigger things, like a pregnancy.   
“Not long to go.” I smiled. “When do you get confined to the office?”   
“Honestly? Months ago, but we’re short staffed so it’s more just being limited. Like I can’t run up five flights of stairs to chase someone.” She stretched her fingers across her stomach as I laughed.   
“I guess not. How you doing with it?”   
She shrugged. “It’s been okay. Tired but nothing major. Morning sickness at the start. I think that’s how Carisi caught onto it. I couldn’t go to a crime scene without puking in the bushes.” Amanda flicked her fringe from her face. “You got OBGYN experience?”   
“Uh, I have some. Actually, I was between psychiatry and obstetrics when I was deciding on my speciality.” I admitted. In comparison to a lot of the other fields, I felt more at home in the maternity wards. It was fast paced, yes, and sometimes devastating, but it was also rewarding in an entirely different way. “I think my mother would have preferred it; she thinks I’m wasting a medical degree by chatting all day.”   
“God, are mothers ever happy though?” she shook her head, “I know mine isn’t.”   
I agreed with her when Sonny came back over. “That was Fin, just looking for an update.”   
“I should let you guys go. Also, I have like twenty minutes till my lunch is finished and I haven’t even picked out what pudding I want.” I pushed my glasses up on my nose. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Where is the neuropsychology department?” Amanda asked before I could step away.   
“Oh, one floor down and to the left, I think, when you come out of the lift. There’s a big direction board telling you where everything is anyway.” I directed them. “All the labs are on the basement floors.”  
“Great, thanks.” Amanda said. “I’m getting the elevator, I can barely see the stairs let alone walk down them.”   
“I’ll take the stairs.” Sonny said, kind of suggesting she leave.   
I grinned when she said goodbye and reciprocated when she told me it was nice to meet me. “She seems nice.” I commented when it was just Sonny and I. I watched as she got into the elevator behind him. “You never said your partner was pregnant.”   
“She’s not really my partner. We’re all just kinda jumping in right now because we’re down a man.” He shrugged, not really picking up on the fact it was the pregnancy I was referring to, not the partner.   
“Well, I gotta go.” I told him.   
“I’ll call you. Tonight or tomorrow.” He took his hand from his pocket and ran it over his face, a little tired looking.   
“Sure.” I nodded. “Maybe after you have a nap, though.”   
“I’m fine,” he assured me. “I’ll see you Saturday still?”  
“All going well, yeah.” I took a half step back. “See you then.”   
We looked at each other for a moment before he opened his mouth. “You’re not going to let me kiss you, are you?”   
With a laugh, I told him no. “Just, patients and people I work with, they’re everywhere.”  
“Got it. Don’t like it, but I got it.” He quirked his brow with a small smile. I went back to the café, glancing over my shoulder to see him still watching me for a second before he turned and went for the stairs.   
I could feel that slight wariness over the ‘girlfriend’ comment. I didn’t even know why I was feeling like that. I liked him. A lot. And I was looking forward to spending a lot more time with him and dating him, but it had just been a while since I had been with a guy I wanted to call my ‘boyfriend’ or introduce him to my friends or tell my family about or have stay over at my place.   
But maybe I would be okay with doing that when the boyfriend was Sonny.


	6. Talk

“You go to that every year?” Sonny asked in half disbelief, half amusement.   
“Yup.” I climbed the last few stairs to my apartment. “Ever since I came here. It was one of the first night outs that me and my friends had.”   
“How long have you been in the States?”   
“Seven years.” I rummaged for my key in my small bag.   
“So you’ve sat through that seven times.”  
“And I always see maybe three films during it. So twenty one films.” 

I had taken him to the annual Horrorfest that was held in Chelsea. Every year I went, usually with Sita and then when we met Tilly and Piper a year or two later, we all went. It was purely horror films shown, and they did awards and they showed premieres and had different events on. I loved it, it was just good fun.   
The night before, I had met up with the three girls and we watched ‘Halloween’. Things had definitely changed since the first time we had all gone. Both Sita and Piper had husbands and children. Piper’s kid was four already, which terrified me. I remembered when she, Lola, was born. Piper was a couple of years older than me, but still, I felt a weird familial anxiety because when she was my age, she had a one year old. I had a cat.   
Tilly was a fully-fledged, growing in experience teacher at an arty (read hipster) high school in Tribeca. Although we were always close, we had really cemented the friendship when we were the only ones consistently interested in clubbing nowadays. 

The film I saw with Sonny was ‘Friday the 13th’ which was one of my favourite horror franchises, bar the Scream movies. I knew he was vaguely into scary movies but I think the short films they showed before the feature may have creeped him out just a little bit.   
“Man, you are always full of surprises.”   
“You know it.” I smiled as he put his hands on my waist. I tilted my head back a little as he kissed my cheek from behind me.   
He was an incredibly affectionate person. Although we had only known each other just over two weeks, he had settled into my life easily. Even our first date, at the Italian place, he touched my arm and hand as we talked. In the museum, he had an arm around me or pulled my hand to show me a piece. And at the movie theatre, he had his hand on my leg- not in a way that he was trying to be sneaky or seductive, but just in a comfort way.  
I was still trying to get used to that.   
And, of course, I had the ‘girlfriend’ comment still stuck firmly in my head. I hadn’t broached the subject with him yet, I didn’t want to do it over text. But I knew I was going to ask him about it that night.   
“Mm.” I smiled at the feeling of his lips against my cheek. “I did see you get a little bit scared during the second short though.”  
“I really hate it when it’s dark and you can’t see the ghost or whatever. I’m fine with blood and guts and gore but I don’t like it when you can’t see who you’re facing.” He followed me into the apartment once I had opened the door.   
“Ooh, I could analyse the fuck out of that, detective.” I laughed, clicking the light on.   
“I bet.” He ran his hand over his hair and pulled off his jacket. He was dressed much more casually than he had done for work, with form fitting dark jeans and a dark grey crew neck jumper. 

Guppy, awakened by the light, came over to me and meow diligently at my feet. I scooped her up and stroked at her neck before tossing my keys onto the bowl in the breakfast bar. I let her nuzzle against my shoulder before she wriggled from my arms and leapt down to the floor. She gave Sonny a wide berth before going into my office to sit on one of her favourite spots- the top of my filing cabinet.   
“It’s gonna take me a while to win her over.” Sonny stared into my office after the cat. “It’s weird, I’m an animal person.”   
“Don’t feel bad. She’s not really an animal.” I reasoned. “I swear she’s like a half human, half weird being.” I pulled off my denim jacket and went over to the cupboard to hang it up, asking Sonny to give me his over.   
“Did I tell you that you look great tonight?” Sonny’s smile was that half smirk that made me feel hot inside.   
I laughed before hooking the jacket up in the cupboard. “You tell me that every time I see you, I’m beginning to think it’s just a line.”   
I heard his loud laugh behind me and I reached out for the jacket. “I can’t help it if it’s true every time.” He wrapped his arms around my waist. I tossed his jacket over the hook and walked us backwards, pressing my body against his. “I mean, this dress.” He crushed my body closer to him. His hips were flush against me as he spoke. “The sides of it just aren’t fucking fair.” 

I was wearing a black ribbed knit maxi dress casually with my flat trainers but there were slits on either side reaching just to the bottom of my thigh. It gave a bit of an edge to an otherwise boring dress, but practicality wise, it also made it hell of a lot easier to walk.   
Sonny’s lips were against the side of my neck and moved up quickly to behind my ear. With a combination of teeth, lips and tongue, he kissed over my ear and cheek whilst turning me around to face him.   
Grinning, I let him move his hands through the slits in the dress, his fingers trailed up my thighs, hiking my dress up as he did. We staggered towards my bedroom but only made it as far as the door when he pushed my back up against the frame. My head hit the wood with a soft thunk! I laughed, clutching it when he mumbled, “Shit sorry,” against my neck.   
I pulled at his jumper and yanked off the woollen material along with the undershirt in seconds, almost weeping from the moment separation from his hands when we threw his jumper on the floor. I gently dragged my nails over the soft skin on his back, pushing down his jeans, feeling smug when he moaned into mouth.   
In response, he slipped his fingers into my panties, pushing them down my legs so I could feel the material of my dress against my bare skin. I clung to his shoulder, digging my hands into his flesh, feeling his muscles move beneath me.   
“Oh god, Dominick.” I half whispered, half moaned with lips close to his ear.   
Upon hearing his real name, he lost it and groaned loudly against me. “Fuck.” He wrapped his arm around my waist and lifted me over to the bed, climbing on top of me.   
I had been planning to talk seriously with him before we did anything that night, but when he kissed my neck like he did? All my plans flew out the window.

-

I had to hold the bottles of water by the cap because they were fresh from the fridge and freezing my fingers off. I tossed one of the bottles to Sonny who caught it easily.   
He took a long swig of it before capping it and setting it down on the bedside table. I sipped mine, slowly getting my pulse back to normal. Sonny was watching me, more specifically my body.   
I put down my bottle and crawled onto the bed, sitting up.   
“I’m still annoyed you keep putting your clothes back on.” He slid his hand over my thigh. I had put on my underwear again and tossed a t-shirt on too.   
I ran my hand up and down his forearm before I leant over and kissed him softly. “It’d get kinda cold if I had to walk around naked all the time.”   
“I’m not suggesting all the time.” He murmured before pulling my lips between us. “Just when we’re alone, here.”   
I laughed, pulling back but keeping his hand on my thigh. As soon as I had stepped out of the bed, away from Sonny, the topic came back into my head. And I was forcing myself to broach it with him.   
“I kinda wanna talk about something.” I pulled my pillow onto my lap. I felt like a teenager again, trying to define my high school relationship. But although I was a little concerned about what way our talk would go, I knew that he wasn’t planning on ditching me. I could feel his attachment to me, just as strong as my attachment was to him. 

A tense frown formed on his face and he squinted up at me a little. “What’s up?”   
“Uh, it’s a weird kinda question slash topic.” I started. “And I feel like a kid asking you about it. I just, um, when I met Amanda you introduced me to her as ‘your girlfriend’.”   
Realisation dawned across his face. “Ohh.” He nodded, parting his lips. “Is that not okay? I just assumed that-”  
“No, it’s fine.” I jumped forward a bit to stop him from getting the wrong idea. That last thing I wanted to do was hurt him. “I’m good with it. In fact, I’m more than good with it.” I clutched his arm in slight reassurance. “It’s just, um, quick. I’m happy with the quickness, I’m happier in this than I’ve been in a long time with relationships. But I like definition and clear cut boundaries. I’m not a free for all kind of person.”   
He laughed and brought my hand up to his lips to kiss. “I’ve found that. You like plans, right?”   
“Right.” I agreed, brushing his cheek with my thumb. “So with…past relationships, I’ve always kinda just talked about some stuff before, like, getting more into it.”   
“We’ve got into quite a lot.” Sonny reached for my waist with a grin but I caught his hands before he could pull me closer and put me off topic. “Right, sorry. So what kinda stuff you wanna ‘define’?”   
“You better not be laughing at me.” I pinched his thigh and he laughed, smacking my hand away from him. “So if I’m your girlfriend, then are we exclusive?”   
I could feel myself cringe just as I had said it. I always did dread any kind of chat like this, but I knew from previous relationships that it would save me heartache down the line.   
Sonny kind of squinted at me, frown almost appearing. “Uh, I’ve been thinking that we were. Did I get the wrong idea? I just assumed again.” I could almost see a slight bit of panic appearing on his face as he went to move away a little, but again I leapt to grab him.   
“No, I wanna be exclusive, you know? Like, I haven’t seen anyone since we met. Granted two and a half weeks isn’t a huge amount of time, but I…you know. I don’t wanna. Like.” My sentences were becoming incoherent and I had to pause for a second to take a breath. I cupped his face in my hand, having knelt up beside him. “Sonny, I don’t want to be with anyone else.”   
The smile came back on his face and dimples formed at my thumbs. “Me neither.” Sonny’s voice was quieter, but audible because of our close proximity. He moved me down the bed, hovering over my body to kiss me. I kissed him back, moving my hand over his back. I was rather quickly falling in deep lust with his body, especially his arms and back; the smoothness and strength was intoxicating. 

“Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?” he pulled back a little and placed a kiss on my nose, and then just below my glasses.   
I turned onto my side to look at him and he tucked his hand in mine. I thought for a second, about what I should tell him, what I needed him to know.   
“Just that I fully expect you to get rid of all the spiders I come across. I’ll leave them under a glass for you to deal with if you’re not here.” I admitted with a smile. He laughed loudly next to me, shaking the mattress a little bit.   
“That’s a deal.” He kissed my hand.   
We lay for a moment, just looking at each other. I ran my eyes over his face; his fair eyebrows, the soft lines he had around his crystal eyes from laughing, his long nose that had an endearing bump in the middle, his gorgeous smile and the dimples that really gave him away.   
He was doing the same, staring at my face, taking in my tired green eyes behind the thick glasses I wore and the smattering of freckles across my nose. He always kissed this one freckle above my upper lip, just beside my nose.   
“Is there anything you want to talk about?” I rubbed my thumb over his hand that held mine.   
Sonny took a breath. “Not really. But I haven’t been in a relationship in a while.”  
“Well, I can say it doesn’t show, detective.” I slid towards him and scattered kisses across his jaw. “You’re not rusty at all.”   
He laughed and caught my lips in his just for one kiss. “What I was trying to say, Braveheart, was that Rollins usually makes fun of me for being eager, so I’m sorry if I’m ever a little…intense. Which I get I probably already have been.” 

I felt a little stab of guilt from what I had said to Amanda earlier on that week. “I like it.” I told him, no smile on my face because I was serious. “It’s been a while since I felt like it wasn’t a one sided thing.”   
He swallowed and he hesitated just a little bit before speaking again. “When did you end your last relationship?”   
I suppressed my urge to groan. I thought I had dodged those questions the week before, but I knew I’d have to talk over things eventually.   
“Um, last summer. He was a school teacher in Queens and we dated for, like, two months but it never really turned into anything.” I slipped my hand from his and lay on my stomach. He watched me as I pulled my pillow down a little and tucked my chin into it. “Since then, it’s just been causal dates.”   
By casual dates, I meant one night stands and me ignoring phone calls. There wasn’t anyone that I had met up with consistently, except a guy I had known from years before, Tommy.   
Tommy was the twin brother of a girl who lived in my building just after I finished at Columbia. I had met him, drunk, on my way home from a night out and I had invited him into my apartment when I saw him in the hallway. He declined but followed up on the offer the next day. He didn’t live in New York, he worked down in Philadelphia but came to his see his sister every month or two. Whenever he was around, we hooked up- no strings attached. We didn’t talk when he wasn’t in town, I didn’t even have his number. It was a decent arrangement.   
“Do you mean one night stands?” Sonny asked with a grin.   
Caught. With a laugh, I nodded. “Pretty much, yeah.”   
He shifted a little to move from his side to his back. He tucked the arm further away from me under his head. His new position emphasised the muscles in his arms. I wanted to reach out and brush my fingers over his smooth skin but I didn’t.   
“Been there.” he commented, looking up at my ceiling.   
“Oh really?” I raised my eyebrows. “You some sort of lothario, Carisi?”   
He laughed, loudly. “God, no. But girls seem to like it when they find out I’m a cop.”   
The way he said cop reminded me of the night at the bar, how funny I found it hearing him say that, like he was someone out of a movie. It was like ‘cawp’.   
“It’s the uniform. The badge, maybe.” I spoke from experience. “Or the danger of it.”   
“Yeah, it maybe attracts women but, uh, once the reality of the job sets in, they tend to bail.” His smile lessened, his expression became slightly wistful. “The crazy hours, the last minute cancelling, on call, taking work home with me.”   
I nodded, understanding what he was saying. I guess it was the same kinda stuff I had to deal with. More so when I was a resident, less so since I got my full time post at Bellevue.   
“Which is why I haven’t had a lot of long term relationships. I once made it past a year.” He commented. “But that was when I was a rookie, and so was she. But then she moved to California.”  
“You think you’d still be together if she hadn’t moved?” I questioned, no jealousy or envy, just curiosity.  
“Nah.” He inhaled heavily. “We actually used to fight all the time. It was years ago, I was a kid. I was twenty four.” 

And it dawned on me; I didn’t know how old he was. So I asked him.   
“Thirty three,” he replied before waggling his eyebrows. “I’m too old for you?”   
I dipped my head into the pillow and laughed. “Nah, you’re alright.”  
“You’re, what? Twenty eight?”   
“Twenty nine.” I corrected. “So when you were with this girl, I would have been nineteen, a couple of years into my medical degree, three thousand miles away.”   
“That’s weird to think about.”  
I mulled it over in my head. It was a natural progression for me to tell him about Craig, since we were on the subject. I was fine talking about it, it was just a little odd for me to talk to a new boyfriend about it. 

With a half breath, I stared at the wall my bed was against and opened my mouth. “I was engaged.”  
I heard his hair brush against the pillow as he turned to look at me. “Engaged?” he repeated.   
I nodded. “Yeah. It was a few years ago. I didn’t get married or anything. It was only for a hot minute, but I got the ring.” I could feel the heat on my skin as I felt that uncomfortable feeling growing in me. I moved onto my back, lying alongside him but I didn’t meet his gaze. I just stared up at the ceiling, hands set on my stomach. My hair curled around my shoulders. “He’s the guy I talked about, the one you asked about.”  
“The one in the stories.” He finished my thought.   
“Yeah. We, uh, were together for almost three years. His name was Craig and he was literally one of the first guys I had a conversation with when I arrived in New York. He was at Columbia too, except he was studying architecture.” I remembered meeting him at a party in the undergrad dorms. It was how I met Sita too. We were all students at the same time, just at different stages, in different subjects but around the same buildings. “We got together and it was great. He was sweet and kind. His family were, like, society people. I went to their house in the Hamptons and we had massive Thanksgivings dinners at their place, but they weren’t snobby or entitled. They just happened to be rich. Anyway, uh, I finished up at college and moved to Washington Heights, which I loved and he hated because he thought it wasn’t safe. So when my lease ran out, he asked me to move in with him, and I did. So we lived in East Harlem and, for a month or so, it was perfect. Like idyllic. He worked for Newland and Farm, designing offices and I was at Bellevue and we were just kind of passing ships. And then, seven months after I moved in, he asked me to marry him and I said yes.” 

I had come home from work, exhausted and slightly frazzled to find Craig- tall, perfectly preened Craig- waiting for me with a ring in one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other.   
Sonny was still watching me, still listening, waiting for me to go on. “What happened?” he asked to prompt me to continue.   
“I fell out of love with him.” My tongue glazed my lips. I felt ashamed, at first, incredibly guilty. But I couldn’t help it. “I knew before he proposed. I knew I didn’t feel the same way. But I said yes anyway. I still don’t know why I said yes. I think I was just hoping it would work itself out.”   
I could still see his face, how happy he was when I put the ring on. I could still remember how excited his family was, how shocked my friends were, how scared I was.   
“A week later, we went to a dinner dance benefit thing with his family. And all through it, I felt like this complete…fraud. Like I was suffocating, like I was on the edge, as if I had been acting through the whole relationship and he was on the cusp of finding out who I really was. His whole family, who again, were great, they just kept making jokes and asking questions. What do you think about a summer wedding? Will both your sisters be bridesmaids? Is your mother excited? I couldn’t fucking breathe.” I could feel my throat close up just talking about it. “I didn’t even tell my family. I didn’t tell anyone I worked with. I only told Sita, Piper and Tilly. That was a sign. So when we got home, I just told him I couldn’t do it. I said I was sorry, but I had to call it off.”   
He yelled and looked like I had just stabbed him. And I left and went to stay with Piper. But after a day, Craig came to see me and he said he understood. We were young. And there was a part of him that was just going through the motions. He was comfortable with me, but maybe not as in love as he used to be. He almost refused to take back the ring. But I couldn’t keep it. It an heirloom. What was I supposed to do with it? Wear it? Sell it?   
I still had the other jewellery he had gotten me over the years. A ruby bracelet he had given me after I graduated from Columbia. A diamond watch for our second Christmas together. The platinum pen set I got when I started my residency. And a lifetime of memories from our multitude of vacations.   
“He went to Vegas with his friends while I moved out of the apartment and sublet a place in the Bronx before moving down to the East Village.” I rubbed my lips together. I didn’t know what more to add, but I still didn’t want to turn my head that little bit to look at him. 

I heard him open his mouth. “How did you know?”   
I glanced over to him. “How did I know what?”   
“That you didn’t love him anymore.”  
I dragged my teeth over my lip and looked back up. “We stopped caring, noticing things. He would ask me if I was okay and I would say yeah, even if it wasn’t the truth and he would just accept it. He couldn’t have known.” I felt my throat grow thick, the lump in my throat form as the familiar feeling of tears arose. Why? I don’t know. I didn’t have any feelings for Craig, not anymore. “He couldn’t have known, because I never told him. I never talked to him. He never knew I felt homesick. I never talked to him about my parents. I never told him when a person died at work. There was this huge part of me that I kept from him. But there was another, bigger part of me that wanted him to be able to tell without me saying anything.”   
It was the first time I had admitted that out loud. I had never told my friends that, even though I told them almost everything about my life. I didn’t want to admit it. He was my first love and I expected it to be perfect, fairy tale, movie love where he knew what I was thinking before I even thought it.   
Experience had taught me I was wrong. So wrong.   
“It was a first love kind of thing. But I guess it was an intense first love.” I sighed, deciding that would be the end of the discussion on the topic.   
He didn’t let silence fall between us. His hand reached over to my hip that was furthest away from him and he pulled me towards him. Sonny’s lips pressed against my mouth, catching the corner of my lip. “Thanks for telling me.”   
“I was always gonna tell you.” I touched my hand to his chest as he moved back away from me.   
With a shrug, he spoke. “I just like that you talk to me.”   
I ran my hand down his stomach and rested my palm on his hip, giving his shoulder a kiss. “I like talking to you.”   
“I also like other things you do.” Sonny’s expression transformed from caring to mischievous in the short second it took for him to slide his hand under my body and scoop me up. I couldn’t help but giggle when I almost toppled as he pulled me to sit up on his hips.   
I kissed him, feeling incredibly happy. I felt settled, calm, content. It just felt natural to be with him. It felt like I’d been with him for a lifetime.   
“It’s been a good few weeks.”


	7. Introductions

I shifted my bag. It was across my body, but felt like it was weighing heavily on my shoulder despite the fact it only have about four things in it.   
“What number is it?” Sonny asked, prompting me to actually move.   
“Eleven.” I pressed the buzzer to Sita and her husband, Tony’s apartment. I say apartment, it was more of a penthouse.   
It was second from the top and spanned practically the whole floor plan of the building. Both of them had great jobs, put in a lot of work, but had saved like hell to be able to afford their place comfortably. It was a great apartment, especially for their growing family.   
“Who goes there?” Sita’s voice flooded the speaker.   
“I know you can see us, Seet.” I made a face into the camera by the buzzer, making her laugh and telling us to come in.   
We pushed the door and the next one clicked for us to go through.   
“Stairs?” Sonny asked.   
“Babe, it’s six flights up.” I jabbed the button for the elevator.   
“Are you nervous or something?” Sonny slipped his across my shoulders and turned me to look at him. 

Yes. Yes, I was.   
It was nearing the end of November. And we- Sonny and I- had been getting on really, really, well. Everything that attracted me to him at the start, was consistently present. His sense of humour, his dedication to his work and his family and to me, his kindness and intelligence and general amazingness. Plus he was real strong, and incredibly, incredibly good looking.   
We had met up at least once a week, but we tried for more time, trying work round our insane schedules.  
But we were going to Sita’s so he could meet my friends; Sita and Piper and their husbands, plus Tilly and one of Tony’s friends who we hung out with at times.   
He had met Tilly before. He had come round to mine after work one Saturday and Tilly was already there, just on her way out. It was a brief meeting, only twenty minutes or so, but both Piper and Sita threw fits over not being able to meet the guy who was quickly becoming intensely important in my life and so they insisted in me bringing him to the next night in we had.  
He was excited about meeting everyone properly, but honestly he got excited about a lot of things, kinda like a puppy.   
“I’m not nervous. I’m just a little…wired.” I shrugged, gnawing at the inside of my lip. “I haven’t invited anyone to a night in years.”   
“Well, they’ll love me, I’m great. And if they don’t then I’ll make sure they’re given speeding tickets and then get them out of the tickets and I’ll be a hero.” Sonny kissed my head just as the doors opened to the lift.  
“Just, like, don’t mention much about work. Tilly is great, but she’s really anti-establishment. And also, Piper’s husband, Shawn, he’s real sensitive about gore. So no chat about murders or death or blood.” I told Sonny. I could see him rolling his eyes at me as he pressed for their floor. “Seriously, Sonny. One time I talked about stitching someone up and he almost passed out.”   
“I got it. I have actually talked to people before.” He wrapped his arms around me, trying to steady my concerns. “Just relax, okay?”   
I slid my arms around his waist and lay my head on his chest. “I am relaxed.” But I would be a lot more relaxed once I had a drink.   
“Good, because I have two favours to ask.” He spoke quickly so I couldn’t butt in. “The first one is Thanksgiving.” 

I stifled a groan and forced myself not to move away from him. I could just see where it was going.   
He had casually asked about my holiday plans earlier on that week. I was on call for Thanksgiving, I always was because I didn’t really celebrate it. I wasn’t American, I didn’t really get it. But I went to different dinners over the years, but always volunteered to work because it saved other people, who really did celebrate it. Also, I went home for Christmas so I always figured that I should do one holiday at least.   
“I want you to come with me to my family’s.” He dropped his hands to the base of my back as we rode the elevator. “They really wanna meet you. It’ll be intense; my parents, sisters and Tommy and the baby too.”  
I pulled back away so I could look up at him. I had to meet his family at some point, and it wasn’t like I was dreading it. It just worried me a little. I had gotten so invested in Craig’s family that it wasn’t just him I split up from, it was them too. I was friends with his sister, his mother was the nicest woman ever and his father was one of the most encouraging people I’d ever met.   
But I wanted to meet Sonny’s family, deep down. I think because I wanted Sonny’s life to be highly integrated with mine.   
“You know I’m on call, right?” I asked. He nodded in reply. “So I can’t completely promise that I’ll be there. But plan for me to go, alright?”   
A grin split his face and those sweet dimples came into view. “Yeah? I thought it’d have to be more of a fight.”   
I laughed as the doors open and I walked into the hallway. “Nah. Not when you’ve built up your mum’s cooking so much.” I had hardly spoken the words when he mocked the way I said ‘mum’. Ignoring that, I continued. “What’s the second favour?”   
His hand went to the back of his neck and immediately I knew he didn’t think I was going to like this favour. It was his tell.  
“What is it?” I stopped halfway up the hall, grabbing his arm to halt him.   
“Ahhh, it’s nothing big.” He turned to face me. “It’s just the Christmas precinct thing. There’s one every year, around the eighteenth or so. And I got asked if you were coming, and I was kinda taken by surprise so I said yeah. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But,” he paused to brush my cheek with his thumb. “I want you to.”   
I rolled my neck, feeling it crick as I stretched it out. “Is your whole team gonna be there?”   
“Pretty much. I mean, Rollins said she’ll be there but she doesn’t have a clue really because the baby will be here by then.” He reasoned. “And you know Rollins, so it won’t all be new people.”   
‘Know’ was a bit of a stretch. I had met her twice, really. That first time in the atrium, and then she had gotten sick a week or so before. She had been with Sonny and felt pain in her stomach before fainting. Amanda was taken to Bellevue and Sonny had called me, as if I could somehow fix the situation. I couldn’t of course. She had high blood pressure and was put on bed rest, but I could reassure her. I checked in a few times until she was sent home, when Sonny had had to go back to work. She was grateful for my gift of the good hospital food and company.   
“What is with the meeting people thing tonight?” I questioned, dropping my head against his shoulder.   
“I wanna show you off obviously.” He mumbled against my hair.  
I smiled and tipped my head up a little. “If I’m off, I’ll come.”   
Again, he smiled. “You’re the best.” His hands slipped down to cup my butt and he kissed me. I wrapped my arms around his neck, leaning up on my tip toes to reach him. 

The elevator dinged behind us and I pulled back from him when I heard the word “Jesus.”  
It was Tilly, I recognised her voice from just those two syllables. “Really, you two. Can’t you wait till you get home?” she stepped out of the lift. “I mean, I thought doctors and policemen were supposed to be respectable.”   
Tilly was a child trapped in an adult’s body. The liberal school she taught at practically encouraged her free spirit; most of the teachers there had tattoos and piercings and vibrant colours in their hair just like she did. Well, the colours in her hair had been toned down now, to just a dark blonde, but the pictures on my phone practically documented her journey through the rainbow of colours.   
“Oh, shut up, you.” I headed for Sita’s door and knocked.   
“Hi, Tilly.” Sonny greeted her, slightly flushed. It didn’t bother me.   
These girls had seen me at my best, worst and every second in between. Nothing could shock them, nothing could stop us.   
“Your honour.” She bowed in flourish. “I won’t shake your hands, I know where she’s been.”   
“Thanks, Till.” I said as the door opened. Sita was grinning, already a wine glass in. Her tolerance for drink had diminished incredibly since giving birth. She opened up her arms.   
“Hello!” She welcomed us.   
“Hey.” I stepped inside the door. “Sita, this is Sonny. Sonny, Sita.” I gestured between the two of them.   
“Great to meet you.” Sonny grinned. Sita hugged him tightly, being swamped by his tall form. She was shorter than I was, only five four so it looked like a giant hugging an elf a little bit.   
“I’m so excited you guys are here.” She pulled back.   
“I’m here too, by the way. Haven’t brought anyone though.” Tilly interjected. Sita looped her arm in Tilly’s and pulled her through to the main area of the apartment. 

Piper was sitting on the arm of the sofa and practically tackled me. I hadn’t seen her in a while, in fact, not since that breakfast just after I had met Sonny. We kept in contact of course. Our group chat was always active, but I just hadn’t seen her.   
She was a stark contrast to Tilly. Piper had dark, dark hair- a half shade away from black. It was always straight, it barely held a curl even if it was doused in six cans of hairspray. And her skin was paler than mine. Her go-to Halloween costume was Wednesday Addams, and then Morticia as she grew older, because she didn’t really have to do much. She would always say that she used to be tan until she started working in web design because she spent so much time inside.   
“Hi, Pipes.” I rubbed her back.   
Tony and Shawn got up from the sofa. Tony was a slight, skinny guy and looked tiny next to Shawn, who was taller and broader than Sonny was.   
They both kissed my cheek, leaning over Piper who was still attached to me. “Jake not here yet?”   
“He’s had to bail.” Tony shook his head. “Something at work came up.”  
“Oh great, just me and three couples.” I heard Tilly comment before getting told to shut up by Sita.   
“Uh, Sonny-everyone, everyone-Sonny.” I waved my hand around the group. “Piper, Shawn, Tony.”   
I pulled off my jacket when Piper let go of me and they introduced themselves without me.   
“So she’s in a good mood then.” Piper commented before shaking Sonny’s hand. “I’m Piper. She always hates introducing people to us, so just ignore her.”  
I pulled a face and dropped my bag by the chair. “Where are the bambinos tonight?”   
“Lola’s with the sitter.” Piper said.  
“Roscoe’s with my dad.” Tony told us. “First sleepover.”   
Sita made a small squeak and shook her head. “I don’t know if I’m happy or devastated. I mean, one night away from home, next thing I know he’ll be at college.”   
“Right. Drinks.” Tony brushed off his wife’s concern and set about getting us beverages. “Beer or something else, Sonny?”   
“Beer’s good.” Sonny raised his eyebrows as Sita said for him to take off his jacket.   
“To start with.” Tilly kicked off her boots. “Because we always start off well, and then we end up crawling home.”   
“Oh yeah, Raina told me about the card game.” Sonny grinned and glanced over to the already prepared table.   
Our nights in were a little weird. We had been doing it since…well since always. We would play cards, but we used to all be absolutely broke so we never played for money, we played for drinks. What happened was, everyone would have their own drinks, just in shot glasses. And the person who would have won the money just didn’t have to drink. Everyone who folded got a number and then we rolled a dice and whoever’s number came up had to drink.   
It sounded complicated but the rules were founded during a night fuelled by alcohol and weed five years ago.   
“Are you working this weekend?” Shawn asked both Sonny and me.   
“No, I was on call two weeks ago.” I perched on the side of the sofa.   
“There’s a small chance of a callout, but only after they go through the rest of the team. I was first a few weeks ago.” Sonny said. Everyone moved towards the circular dining table. It sat the six of us, but I knew they had another, bigger table in storage for their Christmas celebrations. 

I wrapped my arms around Sonny’s waist and leant against him as we went to the table, reassuring him even though I knew he was calm as ever.   
He covered my hand with his as he answered Shawn about the hours he worked. I could see Sita watching us with the biggest smile on her face.  
We sat down at the table and I immediately began to tuck into the snacks Sita and Tony had put out on the table. Sonny sat next to me, his hand settled on my leg.   
“Did you decide whether you’re moving out yet, Tilly?” I asked. Her lease was up for renewal, and she was in two minds as to move out or stay.   
“I’m just going to renew.” She took a drink of her beer that Tony had delivered to the table. “I can’t be bothered moving again. I swear, I’ve lived in every borough and they’re all good and they’re all shit.”  
“Where are you living?” Sonny asked her.   
“Jackson Heights.” She set her bottle down. “You’re in Brooklyn too, right?”   
He nodded, triggering a half hour conversation about where we had all lived over the years. Between the seven of us, we had tried almost every neighbourhood in the state.   
“I think the only thing I liked about you guys living on Central Park West was that we could watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade.” Shawn said to Sita and Tony.  
They had a place, a few years ago, that was practically cursed. There were leaks and crap neighbours and bats. They ran out of there as soon as they could.   
“Oh, are you coming here for Thanksgiving this year?” Sita asked with a mouthful of nachos.   
They were going to make a big deal about it, I could feel it. I could already see the glint in their eyes before I even spoke. “Uh, actually, I’m spending Thanksgiving with Sonny’s family.”   
Just those words made Piper raise her eyebrows in surprise. Tilly opened her mouth to say something but I gave her a look to silence her.   
“Are you not on call?” Shawn questioned, scooping up a chip.   
“No, I am. If I get called when I’m in Staten Island, I’ll just have to come back. I’ll drive anyway and won’t be drinking.” I licked my lip.   
I could see the three girls exchanging smirks, and so could Sonny.   
He started to laugh. “It’s alright. I know she’s neurotic about meeting families.”   
There was a slight pause before the three of them started talking at the same time, acting as if I was the anti-family girl, when in reality, I loved family, despite my slightly mitch match one.   
Sonny rubbed my leg as I leant over to lean my head on his shoulder. “Okay, can we not? Can we start our card game, please?”   
And we did just that. 

It was almost one a.m. when we finished our game. Well, we had slowed in our progress an hour before, when we all got a little too drunk to focus, yet continued to drink.   
“Babe, our cab is here.” I was hanging on the rail of the stair. For some reason, we had all gathered at the outside door of their apartment building.   
Tilly had already left, just minutes before. We did have to help her into the taxi and make her swear to text us when she got home.   
Sonny had settled into the group perfectly. There wasn’t a second that it was uncomfortable or slow. It was like our first date- smooth and fun and easy.   
He had settled so much that he was swapping numbers with both Tony and Shawn with plans to go to see some hockey game.   
“Sonny!” I called for him, backing down the steps. He was still talking in the foyer but had moved a step towards me. “Dominick!” I yelled.   
At that he turned round and grinned before jogging out the door.   
Sita and Piper yelled goodbye, half giggling as we fell into the backseat of the cab. My place was only ten minutes away from Sita’s. I laughed as Sonny asked where we were going, despite having had a conversation about that just a few minutes before.   
“Home.” I tucked myself against him. “So, we survived.”   
“I think we thrived. They’re good people.” He kissed my cheek. I could smell the drink on his breath. He had moved quickly from beer to wine to whiskey, but he wasn’t too drunk. Just a little.   
“I know.” I said happily, smiling as he kept kissing me. His lips trailed down my neck and his tongue dragged over my skin. “Wait, like five minutes.” I insisted, but didn’t do anything to stop him.   
“I can’t.” He murmured in between sucking my skin. He had dipped his mouth beneath the shoulder of my white top. His teeth nudged at my bra strap off of my shoulder, tickling my skin with his soft lips. His stubble scratched deliciously at my skin making my eyes fall shut.   
His hand skimmed from its place on my thigh to dip between my legs. I gasped a little, opening my eyes, just as the driver looked at us in the rear view mirror. I really didn’t want to have to look at this middle aged, balding white guy whilst my boyfriend was trying to slip his fingers into my jeans.   
“Sonny, wait.” I grabbed his wrist, laughing. I whispered, almost silently in his ear that we were being observed.   
“Let’s give him a show then.” He bit my earlobe.   
“Hey, I’m going to Staten Island with you. You can keep your dick in your pants for five minutes.” I moved to lean against him, sliding down so his lips could only reach my hair.   
“Yes, ma’am.” Sonny looped his arm around me, nuzzling my hair.  
His hands did continue to wander in our ride, over my legs, my body and every so often I turned my head to kiss him, but moved back before it could get any more heated. 

The journey had allowed the alcohol to settle into my brain and by the time we stumbled out at my apartment, my head was more than a little fuzzy.   
My phone buzzed as we reached the door and I passed my key card to Sonny so I could get my phone from my bag.   
“That a booty call?”   
“If only.” I laughed at him as I tucked my phone back in my bag. “Just Tilly saying she’s home safe.”   
He closed the door behind us and I walked into the foyer. Sonny came up behind me, arms crushing my waist as he pulled my jacket off. “Now can I kiss you?”   
“I would welcome it.” I turned around, feeling my jacket fall to my elbows. “But is it actually legal to have sex here?”   
He groaned, loudly, against my mouth. “Maybe not.”  
“Maybe?” I clutched at the waistband of his jeans. “I thought you studied law.”  
“I do, but I can’t quite remember what the exact wordings are when you have your hands that close to my dick.” He pulled his hips towards me.   
“Well, I know it’s not legal. And I also know I’ll get kicked out if someone sees us.” I pressed kisses on his cheek. “So, I’ll race you upstairs.”   
I tore away from him and ran up the steps. I could hear him laughing before following close behind me. I half clambered up the two flights of stairs, beating him by just two steps.   
“I win.” I panted, raising my hands up. Sonny looked at me from the step below me. “What’s my prize going to be?”   
He smirked, breathing heavily from the run. I was expecting him to speak but he just grabbed my waist and put me over his shoulder.   
I shrieked in surprise before falling into a fit of giggles.   
“I can think of a few things.” Sonny jostled me, his hand smacking my ass. I couldn’t stop laughing, my brain was foggy with drink. I ran my hands over his body and down to the curve at the bottom of his back. He opened up my door and I pushed it close. He still didn’t put me down, even when I threw my bag down and pulled off my jacket.   
“Sonny!” I drummed on his back. He ignored me but took me into the bedroom, dropping me onto the bed. “Oh god, I’m going to have such a headache tomorrow.”   
“We can deal with that tomorrow.” He yanked down my jeans. Within seconds, his mouth was on my thighs, kissing, licking, biting my flesh. I pulled him up to my face so I could kiss him, so I could pull off his shirt, so I could feel him against me properly. “Oh my god, I love you.”   
I didn’t miss a beat before the words fell out of my mouth in response, just before he froze up in slight fear. “I love you, too.”


	8. Thanksgiving

“Yeah, ma, we’re just crossing the bridge. We’ll be there in ten.” Sonny spoke into the phone.   
I glanced across to him in the passenger seat. He was all limbs in the front: angular and tall.   
It was almost twelve on Thanksgiving Day and we were on our way to Sonny’s family’s house. I had hyped myself up for it, already rid myself of my nerves by asking Sonny everything I could think of about his family. I had to know what not to say and what topics were safe bets. He made fun of me for it but answered my questions anyway.   
“Jesus, she’s practically on the ceiling.” Sonny shook his head after hanging up the phone.   
“Oh, great. Put me under more pressure. Thank you.” I rolled my eyes as I followed the navigation on the car.   
“She’s just excited. You couldn’t do anything to make them not like you.” He reached his hand over and set it on my thigh. I glanced down to his hand as he squeezed my leg, running his thumb over the black jeans I had finally settled on.   
The previous evening, while Sonny was studying at the table, I had scoured my closet in search of an outfit appropriate to wear. Eventually I had decided on my cropped black jeans, with black heeled boots and a star printed shirt. Sonny, however had just thrown on his jeans and a burgundy sweater moments before we left. He was so relaxed. Always.   
Except that one morning. The morning after we had gone to Sita and Tony’s.   
-  
“Mmm.” I whined, tucking my sheets under my chin, trying to ignore the shaking of my arm. “Stop it.”  
Sonny rubbed at my back. “Here.” He passed me the cold water bottle. Without putting on my glasses, I uncapped the bottle and gulped the cold water, feeling it slide down my throat, almost giving me cold goose bumps.   
My head was sore. The pain radiated down my temples to my face, but I was more tired than anything else. I reached across to the bedside table for my phone and winced at the light in the still dark room. It was just past eight in the morning. “It’s too early.”   
“I know, but we need to drink water or it’ll be even worse.” His voice was always croaky in the morning.   
I blinked a few times before looking round to him. Without my glasses, he was all blurry, but I could still make out his bedhead. I reached out my arm and cupped his face in my hand. “How you feeling?”   
He groaned, pressing his water bottle to his forehead, pushing his hair out of the way. “I feel like you’re too young for me.”  
I frowned, sleepily, in question.   
“Could barely keep up with you. I can’t face getting hungover all the time. I went to college, those days are behind me.” He placed his bottle on the floor next to him. He slid back down the bed and tucked his arm around my waist, pressing his bare stomach to my back. “But I guess the waking up with you makes it a little better.”   
I rolled my eyes at the cheesiness of his line and dropped my head back onto the pillow, hugging it close to me. I could feel his breath against my shoulder, his knee nudging at mine, his chest rise and fall behind me.   
A few moments passed before I heard him open his mouth to speak. “Do you wanna talk about last night? About what I said?”   
I didn’t move. I didn’t reply. Because I didn’t really know what to say.   
A part of me thought that it was a heat of the moment kind of thing, something that we blurted out to each other whilst we were turned on and wanting each other. But there was another part of me that figured that maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was true.   
I mean, I loved spending time with him. I really did. And he was funny and amazingly kind. And he cared about me. And my heart always sped up when I saw him.   
“Babe,” he kissed my shoulder. “So, you’re not gonna reply to me, okay.”   
I seized up, I think. I was too freaked out to say anything. I hadn’t said ‘I love you’ to a boyfriend since I broke up with Craig.   
“I’m just tired, Sonny.” I pulled my pillow tighter to me. My stomach clenched and unclenched as seconds of silence passed.   
“Okay.” He whispered. The darkness of the room made it feel even earlier that it was. “But I meant what I said, Raina. I love you.”  
My lungs pushed out all the air and I bit down, hard on my lip. The fear drenched my body. It was that uneasiness that appeared when he called me his girlfriend, and when he asked me to meet his family, and when he made casual references to the future. It wasn’t necessarily a bad feeling, it wasn’t dread or anything. It was just the unknown of it all.  
“How do you know?” I felt my throat croak as I spoke. I felt vulnerable and somewhat ridiculous just asking him that. I didn’t want him to think I was seeking validation or approval, I just wanted to know.   
“That I love you?” his lips pressed into the curve between my shoulder and neck. His voice was soft as he spoke. “I guess because I think about you all the time; when I’m at work, at law school, studying, driving, Jesus- everything. I always think about you. And, uh, I’m never happier than when I’m with you. And you understand everything about me, my job and all that. And you make me laugh.”  
Everything he was saying, I felt too.   
Maybe, I didn’t recognise those feelings as love because my relationship with him was so different to the one I had with Craig. With Craig, we grew up together; we went through a lot of firsts and it just seemed comfortable to be with him.   
But with Sonny, it wasn’t just comfort, it was exciting and fun. And I loved him.   
I really did. Despite the fact it had only been a few months, and my family didn’t even know about him, I knew that it was true. I loved him.   
I turned my head towards him, tilting my chin back. “I love you.”   
“Yeah?” he whispered against my cheek.   
I caught the corner of his mouth with a kiss. “Yeah.”  
-  
“This one, here.” Sonny pointed at one of the houses on the right.   
There was a space, just a house up and I pulled in there. “I’m okay here?”   
“Yeah.” Sonny nodded.   
I glanced out the window to the house. It was so normal, it was just a regular family home in Staten Island, like every other one in the block. But to Sonny, it wasn’t. It was his home.   
“Hey.” Sonny’s hand went to my hair, getting me to turn to face him. I was chewing on my lip, practically consuming my lipstick. “It’s gonna be fine.”  
“I know.” I leant over to kiss him. “Okay. Let’s go.”   
I took a deep breath before opening the door, reminding Sonny to get the drinks from the backseat. Sonny had talked up his mother’s cooking so much, I knew it was pointless for me to bring a pie or any other kinda dessert, so I went for beer and wine and a bouquet of flowers.   
I tucked my keys into my jacket pocket. I was wearing a long camel coloured duster coat which kept me warm and had pockets big enough that I didn’t need a handbag- I could just throw my keys, phone and some cash into them. I took the wine and flowers, Sonny carried the beer and hummed the death march.   
With a laugh, I elbowed him in the side. He laughed loudly next to me and wrapped an arm around my waist as we walked up the yard. He didn’t knock the door, just opened it up and stepped inside. I don’t know why that hit me as weird. Maybe because I never did the same in Scotland; I always knocked, because I guess it wasn’t really my home at all.   
“Hey!” A squeal came out and a slight blonde launched herself at Sonny. He stumbled back a tiny bit, catching her, hugging her tightly.   
“Hey, Bella.” Sonny laughed, moving forward.   
Okay, I thought, closing the door behind me. That’s one sister.   
“Oh my god, you’re really here.” She pushed her brother aside and stared at me.   
She looked quite like Sonny did, really. Her hair was lighter, a more clear blonde than his, and she was skinnier, but she had the same kind of energy, same eyes and strong chin.   
“Hi.” I smiled at her, feeling the full speculation of her gaze.  
“Bella, this is Raina Callum.” Sonny grinned down at me.   
She wasted no time in grabbing my arm and pulling me into the hearth of the home. “So good to finally meet you. I mean, he doesn’t shut up about you. And since he told us that you were coming over, Ma has barely talked about anything else, it’s like the rest of us don’t exist.” She paused in her speech to yell for her mother.   
In the living room, the rest of his family sat.   
His father was so like Sonny, it was like looking into the future. He was shorter and broader and he was starting to get that middle aged spread in the middle of his body, but everything else was exactly like Sonny- the nose, the jaw, the mouth.   
He was sitting in the well-loved armchair, holding the remote to the TV in one hand and a beer bottle in the other, just the way Sonny sat in his apartment.   
On the sofa were his other two sisters, both similar looking, but completely different to both Sonny and Bella. They were dark haired, tanned skinned, brown eyed. There was nothing fair about them. They were bold, unapologetic in their looks.   
“Hi!” I grinned. They were all staring at me, all smiling.   
“Jesus, stop staring at her.” Sonny pulled his dark brown leather jacket and tossed it on the back of the sofa.   
His words sprung his sisters into action and they pushed both Bella and Sonny out of the way to introduce themselves.   
Gina was perfectly preened- long talons of nails and immaculately applied make up. Her hair was shorter than Teresa’s, but just as full. “I’ll have that.” She took the wine from my hands. “At last, he brings a girl home.”   
“So nice to meet you.” Teresa grinned at me, just as a woman, who I assumed was their mother, came out of the kitchen.   
“Sonny?” she wiped her hands on the towel she held and tossed it onto her shoulder.   
“Yeah, Ma,” Sonny’s cheeks were quickly flushing, as if he was suddenly becoming embarrassed. He let himself be pulled in for a hug by his mother.  
He towered over her, at least a foot taller. She was a mum, no other words for her. With her apron tied around her body, she looked at home in her son’s embrace. Her dirty blonde hair was slightly frizzed from the heat of the kitchen, but she had the biggest smile on her face.   
“And you must be Raina.” She turned to me, stepping out of her son’s arms. “It’s so good to finally meet you.”   
“You too.” I smiled, shaking her hand. She had soft palms but a firm grip- soft but strong. “I’ve heard a lot about you. All of you, actually.” I glanced around at them, their stares were kind. “Oh, here.” I handed her the bouquet of carnations and sunflowers.   
She sniffed at the blooms with a smile. “They’re gorgeous. Gina, get me a vase.”   
Gina gestured at the parade on the TV. “But I was-”  
“Gina, I am slaving over a feast, the least you can do is fetch me a damn vase.” Mrs Carisi cocked an eyebrow at her middle daughter who went to the kitchen with a roll of her eyes.   
Sonny’s hands went to my shoulders to pull off my coat. I took my phone from my pocket and let him take it. I shoved my phone into my back pocket of my jeans.   
“Sonny said you’re on call today?” Mrs Carisi asked.   
“Yeah, unfortunately. I’ll be off at Christmas so I gotta cover one holiday, you know?” I folded my arms around myself, unsure of what to do. “Thank you for having me for dinner, by the way. It’s kind of you.”   
“Oh, please, it’s our pleasure.” She led me round to the sofa to sit in the space that had been occupied by Teresa.   
“Where’s the baby?” Sonny came back into the living room from hanging up our jackets and dropped himself down on the couch next to me.   
“Tommy’s just getting her up. They’re in my old room.” Bella folded herself onto the floor, back leaning against the wall. She was so slight, kinda like a kid, like Sonny.   
“So, Raina, do you celebrate Thanksgiving?” Theresa sat on the coffee table, looking at me.   
I went to speak but Sonny laughed. “Jesus, Teresa, she’s just British, she’s not anti-Thanksgiving.”   
I rolled my eyes at him and elbowed his side. “I just kind of bounce around houses for it, kinda scavenge or work. Last couple of years I’ve gone to my friends but she had a baby a few months ago so I figured it’d be best just to let them be a little family- first holiday and all.”   
“A boy or a girl?” Bella asked me.   
“A boy, Roscoe. He’s like six months or so.” I replied.   
“So, are you going to go home for Christmas?” Mrs Carisi perched on the arm of her husband’s chair. His hand went to her back automatically.  
“Yeah, I go home every year. I stay with my mother, just for the week or so. I’m usually home before New Year’s.” I brushed my hair from my face and crossed my legs. I spotted my tattoo peek out from between the top of my boot and the hem of my jeans. I quickly unfolded my legs.   
“Oh your mom and dad not together?” Teresa questioned.  
“Teresa.” Sonny spoke with a warning in his voice.   
I just laughed. He told me from the beginning that his sisters were nosy, just like my friends, really.   
“No, they’re divorce, remarried.” I told her.   
“And do you have any brothers or sisters?” Mrs Carisi asked.   
“I have two half-sisters, one on each side. Tara’s my dad’s kid, she’s fifteen and then my mum had Felicity who’s eight.” I told them. To them, this all American standard family, I guess my upbringing was less than…appealing.   
“Can we stop with the interrogation, please?” Sonny put a hand up. “I feel like I’m at work.”  
“We just want to get to know her.” Teresa kicked her foot against his shin. “Jeez, we have questions about the first girl you’ve brought home in years.”   
“Yeah, and I asked her here under the impression that you guys weren’t gonna ask questions like we’re on a TV interview.” Sonny wrapped his arm around me.   
There was a slight uncomfortable feeling in my gut that I was hoping would disappear.   
“Oh please.” Gina came up from behind the sofa. “Like they’d let your ugly face on TV.” She squished her brother’s cheeks and flopped, like he had done, onto the space beside him.   
The uncomfortable feeling disappeared.   
And it didn’t come back.   
It didn’t come back when Bella’s fiancé came downstairs with their daughter and Sonny held her, looking so at ease with a baby in his arms.   
It didn’t come back when we sat round the dinner table eating a delicious turkey.   
It didn’t come back when they joked about a doctor being in the family.   
But another feeling took its place; a feeling of relaxation and comfort. It came from being mothered by Mrs Carisi- who insisted I just called her Rose. It came from the soft yet strict nature of Dom, Sonny’s father. It came from the sisterly ribbing Sonny got from the girls. I mean, they were crazy and loud and brash, but only in a good way. Only ever in a good way.   
It’s why I felt so deflated when my phone started ringing.   
I froze halfway through my mouthful of mashed potatoes as I felt it buzzing in my pocket, shrilly ringing through the dinner.   
“I’m so sorry.” I looked up guiltily to Sonny’s parents who just smiled. Sonny, who sat next to me, was the only one who watched as I got out my phone. The rest of the table politely diverted their attention to coo over Sophia.   
I looked at the screen to see it was a Bellevue number. My heart sank.   
“I’m sorry, it’s work. Please, excuse me.” I pushed my chair away from the table and snuck into the hall.   
I could have yelled. I pressed the phone against my stomach and stifled a groan, looking up at the ceiling. With a clear of my throat. “Dr Callum.” I answered.   
The clerk on the phone sounded harassed as she explained the situation. A thirty two year old woman had walked into the ER room and announced she was going to kill herself if someone didn’t help her. She was seeing things, hearing things, feeling things. She wasn’t sleeping despite lying in bed for days at a time. She wasn’t eating despite having a kitchen full of the best food. She just couldn’t deal with her life. And she was terrified.   
Sonny slipped out into the hall, closing the door to the kitchen behind him. He leant his back the wall, hands shoved in pockets and watched as I paced around the small floor area.   
“What’s her history like?” I chewed at my lip, listening to the clerks answer. It was a sudden onset psychosis. “Right. Um. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” I glanced up at Sonny’s face. He didn’t look annoyed or anything but I felt guilty just saying it. “It’ll take me about an hour or so, traffic, you know? Uh, can you get the ER department to settle her in a comfortable room, do not give her coffee and do not leave her alone. Can you ask them to try to get her some kind of snack? And if she gets violent or hysterical, then and only then, use a low dosage of sedative.” I rattled off the instructions. It seemed she was just glad to have clear direction of what to do. “And let her know that I’m on my way, there’s an information sheet about me somewhere on file, most patients like to know who they’re dealing with.”   
“Yes, Doctor. Thank you.”   
I hung up. Clutching my phone, I put my hands on my hips and rolled my neck.   
“You going in?”   
I sighed. “Yeah, I’m sorry. There’s a patient, um, she’s in the midst of, what sounds like, an intense psychosis. I have to go.”   
He just nodded.  
I raked my fingers through my hair. “I’m sorry, Sonny.” I whispered so his family wouldn’t overhear.   
Sonny stretched out and took my hands in his. “Sweetheart, it’s okay. It’s work. I get it.” He pulled me into his body and rubbed his hands over my back. I pressed my forehead against his chest and tucked my hands between us.   
“I know, but you were so excited about this. And I’ve been having a really nice time.” I mumbled against the warmth of his sweater.   
“Rai, please. It’s fine. They’ll understand.” He kissed my hair.   
Yeah, they would. I knew that just from the couple of hours I had been with them. And I knew they would be used to it with Sonny and when Sonny’s father worked too. “I’m still sorry.”   
We stood for a second, even though I knew I’d have to leave if I was gonna make it to the hospital in anything less than an hour. “How you gonna get home?”   
“I’ll get the train. Just call me tonight, okay?” he pulled back.   
I nodded and pushed open the door to the kitchen. They all looked up at me, expectantly.   
“I’m so sorry, but I’ve been called in. I need to go.” I told them, feeling guilty when Rose’s face fell. “I’m so sorry. I’ve had a great time, your food, Rose, was so good, I wish I could stay.”   
“It’s alright, dear.” She smiled up at me. “I’ll put some stuff in a bag for you.”   
“Honestly, it’s fine, I’m full already. But I have to leave, like, now.” I felt Sonny’s hand run down my back and stop at my waist. “But thank you, for all of it. And it was really nice to meet you. All of you.”  
They all said goodbye, said it was great to meet me, but they were sad that I had to go. With one last apology, I ducked back out into the hallway with Sonny who had grabbed my jacket for me.   
“I’m sorry.” I said again, pulling my jacket on.   
“Raina, you say that one more time, I’m gonna steal your car keys and make you walk there.” he shook my shoulders.   
“Fine.” I laughed softly. I opened the door up to the outside, feeling the coldness of the air against my face. “I’ll see you later.”  
“Yeah.” He leant down and kissed me softly. I could taste the beer on his lips.   
“I love you.” I smiled, brushing my fingers over his cheek.   
The dimples appeared on his face. “I love you too.”


	9. Bed

I dropped my keys on Sonny’s kitchen worktop and hopped on one foot to unzip my boots. “So tired.”   
Sonny agreed, pulling his hoodie off over his head. “At least I get a long lie tomorrow.”  
I dropped my boots onto the floor and pulled a face at him. “Urgh. Don’t remind me.”   
It was almost midnight and we had just returned from Amanda’s apartment. Just by chance, I had been staying at Sonny’s; we had made dinner, both done some work and were about to get ready for bed when Sonny’s phone rang. It was Amanda, asking if he could get me to call her.   
Jessie, her barely three week old daughter, was coughing a lot and was refusing to sleep. Any time Amanda got her down for a snooze, Jessie would wake herself back up with the cough. It had gone on all day and the new mother was starting to panic.   
So we went round, she only lived twenty minutes away and, again by chance, I had my car with me. Amanda was terrified, she was almost crying as I checked over the baby. I felt pressured to get it right, I mean, I wasn’t a paediatrician, but I knew enough to know that Jessie was okay. Her temperature was normal and I had checked her from head to toe for any rashes. We ran the shower and sat with her in the bathroom, letting the little one breathe in all the steam. She just needed the steam to give her dry, tickled airways some moisture. Within ten minutes of sitting with Jessie in the bathroom, she had fallen asleep.   
Sonny and I stayed an extra half hour just in case, which gave Amanda time to get a shower herself and change into fresh pyjamas. Feeling a hundred times better, she thanked me. A lot. I left her my number and the instruction that if the cough got any worse, or Jessie’s temperature rose at all, to go straight to the ER.   
“She’s cute though.” I admitted, thinking of the tiny baby girl I had held in my arms. She was so small, so warm. I kind of wanted to sit the whole night with her.   
“Jessie?”   
“What, you think I was talking about Amanda?” I raised my eyebrow at him.   
“I don’t know. You coulda been.” He tugged at my hair.   
“Whatever. Come on, let’s go to bed.” I coiled my arms around his and nudged him towards his bedroom.   
“I was gonna just read one more chapter…” he gestured towards his law books scattered across the table.   
I whined like a spoiled kid. “Please. You’re off tomorrow morning. You can read it then. Come on.” I started kissing over his arm, knowing one fool proof way to get him to come with me. I skimmed my hand down his flat stomach, pushing the material up so I could touch his the soft skin of his abdomen.   
“You’re hands are cold.” He cuddled me close to him.   
“You’ll heat them up in no time.” I mumbled, my lips against the hollow of his throat, my nose brushed his Adam’s apple. “Besides, I’m going to bed. And I forgot to bring my pyjamas.” I kept pushing him towards his room, he wasn’t resisting. I ran my hand down him, settling at the zip of his jeans. I could feel the noise in his throat as I began to kiss over his skin, pulling and nipping at him with my teeth and lips.   
One of his hands covered mine, crushing my moving palm against him. “Fuck. Fine, I’ll read it later.” He spoke in defeat, even though, technically, he was winning a prize.   
“Good choice.” I pushed him through the doorway to his bedroom, letting his free hand pull off my sweatshirt.   
We fell into bed just like always: a mixture of arms, legs and kisses.   
I was tangled up in Sonny’s body and sheets. “I actually did forget my pyjamas, so I really do need something to sleep in.”   
He shook his head, grazing my skin with his stubble. “Sleep naked. It’s better for everyone involved.”   
“I hate sleeping naked.” I shifted to lie on my side, still covered up in the sheets.   
He took his arm from under me and reached across to the drawers by his bed. In a few seconds, he pulled out a white undershirt which I scoffed at.   
“Please. Like my boobs are gonna fit in that.”   
The grin appeared on his face in milliseconds. “That was my thoughts. Your tits in a too tight white t-shirt? It’s what my dreams are made of.” Before he could even get the words out, he leant over and attacked me with his mouth, sucking at the skin on my cleavage, pulling the sheet down.   
I laughed as he pawed at me, like an overexcited high schooler, before pushing his mouth away. “I need a top.”   
Sonny groaned, loudly, and tumbled out of bed to get me a sweatshirt. Whilst he was away from the bed, I pulled on my underwear. It was a weird thing of mine. I really hated sleeping naked. I was fine being naked but I just didn’t like sleeping that way. I liked to be cosy.  
He threw the maroon Fordham sweatshirt I had borrowed one before. He wore it a lot, just in his apartment, more when he was doing a late night study session. It smelled like him.   
Sonny watched me as I pulled it on, or rather he pouted as he watched me cover up my bare chest. “You’re such a tease.” He grumbled as he got back into bed.   
“I’m a tease? I just blew you and then fucked you. There’s no teasing, I followed through, my friend.” I pinched his elbow.   
“Oh, well if it’s such a chore for you.” He rolled his eyes melodramatically. It felt so good to joke with him, to fake argue and mess around. It was fun. It was so fun. “Anyway. I’m not selfish.” He tucked himself against me on his side as I lay back down. He slipped his hand up the sweatshirt and settled it against my bare stomach, my soft flesh. “I receive and I give.”   
“True.” I grinned in the dark, feeling warm just as he said that. “Do you know what one of my favourite things is?”   
“What?” he nuzzled his nose against my temple.   
I breathed out just thinking about it. “When I look down at you when you’re eating me out, and you’re totally naked and you just look amazing.” I told him, completely brashly. “Your back is so toned and your legs are so strong and your ass is freaking amazing.” The laughter came out of my mouth just as I said it.   
I felt his breath against my ear, like he was shocked at what I said. “You have no idea how hot it is that you just said that.”   
In slight confusion, I turned my head to look at him. “Huh?”  
He swallowed and pulled his face back a little. “It’s hot when you say stuff like that, like…dirty or whatever.”   
Even in the dim light of the lamp in the corner, I could see the flush of his cheeks- either from embarrassment or being turned on.   
Intrigued by what he had said, I raised my eyebrows. “I, uh… do you want me to talk more?”   
It wasn’t in my nature, I don’t think, to be so incredibly up front. I mean, in terms of sex, I usually just let it take its course, do what came naturally. I wasn’t a prude, but it was just kinda…less normal for me to talk about it when we weren’t physically in the middle of it.   
His fingers pressed into my stomach. I guess, in his job he was used to talking about sex, but it was still something that, as a couple, could be a little tentative to start with.   
“I guess, it’s hot. But I think it’s only hot when it’s natural.” He shrugged a shoulder. “So, like when you say stuff like you usually do- like when you tell me what you want.”   
My toes stretched out under my sheets as I began to think. Now that we had started to talk about stuff, I figured it was best to continue. I hadn’t said anything because I didn’t feel like I had to, I was incredibly, incredibly happy with Sonny.   
“Is there anything you do wanna do?” I turned a little to lie on my side, facing him. His hand slipped onto the curve of my waist. He looked a little startled by my question, but smiled.   
“Uh, apart from finish law school?” he joked.   
I nudged him. “I’m serious. Like, is there anything you like, that we haven’t done? Or that you don’t like or…?”  
“Aah.” He made the New York Noise again. “Not really. I love everything you do.”  
“Yeah, I know, and I love what you do too.” I said in disclaimer, just in case he thought I was complaining. “But- okay, let me rephrase. If I just asked you, what do you like in bed- what would you say?”   
I watched as he thought for a second and then licked at his lips. “I used to like being rough.”   
I tensed my brow in question. “Used to?”   
He scrunched his nose. “I started working with SVU’s and I started seeing where it was going wrong. Like too rough. And then I’d see rape victims with the same bruises on their hips and thighs as my girlfriends. So, I didn’t like it anymore.”   
Our conversation had gone from somewhat playful to serious in less time than it took for me to blink. “I’ll always tell you if I want you to stop. Until then?” I kissed his chin in a desperate attempt to move away from the serious, real life stuff. “I look forward to you doing that with me.”   
He nudged my lips up to mine and kissed me. “I don’t know…”  
“I want you to. I like it too, you’ve seen that.” I dropped kisses across his lips, his cheek before moving back. “Is there anything else?”  
“I can’t think, Rai.” His voice was moaning.   
“Fine, what do you watch when you watch porn?”   
“How do you know I do?” he got slightly flustered, but hid it well.   
“Because you’re a guy?” With a laugh, I slid my leg between his. “It doesn’t bother me. Prostitutes- that would bother me.”   
He chuckled. “I can see why that would. But I don’t wanna talk about this with you.”   
“Who would you wanna talk about it with? Your mother? Your dad?” I teased. “Besides, I can just go and check your laptop.”   
He stayed silent, just shaking his head, smiling at me.   
I went as if I was going to get out of the bed but he started half laughing, half moaning and wrapped his arms around my waist to stop me from leaving. “Okay, okay. Just normal stuff, alright? Just the normal stuff. Girl on girl, rougher stuff, girls that look like you.”   
“Girls that look like me?” I scoffed, surprised by what he said. “And what is that?”   
He dropped his head on my shoulder, so he didn’t have to look at me. “Like, girls with redder hair, and natural girls, girls with glasses.”   
I couldn’t stop my laugh, it bubbled out of me.   
“This is why I didn’t wanna tell you- it’s weird!” he complained, digging his fingers into my body.   
“I’m not laughing at you.” I laughed at him. “I’m just laughing at the stuff you can find.”  
“Whatever.” He pushed back to look at me. “What about you?”   
“What- do I watch porn?” I mocked him a little, still laughing. He pinched my thigh to get me to listen to him.   
“No, I mean, is there anything you want to do? Like- how adventurous are you?” his hands- non pinching hands- settled on my ass, just under the seam of my underwear.   
“Not really adventurous at all. But I have been with a girl once.” I threw that in, knowing that that fact would make him curious, probably turned on too.  
“What?!” he sat up, hovering over me. “I’ve been with you for three months and this is me just hearing about it?”   
I giggled, curving into the bed. “It was nothing. It was college. We were drunk as hell and Craig suggested it.”   
His face fell when I said Craig’s name but it didn’t stop his enthusiasm. “Tell me about this. Please.”  
I rolled my eyes but told him anyway. That it was just a one time thing, that I barely knew the girl but that it was a fine experience.  
“But I’m definitely into guys, honey.” I rubbed his arm.   
Contemplating what I had told him, Sonny dropped himself back onto the bed next to me. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”   
I laughed and swatted his chest. “It’s late.”   
“Yeah. And one of us is up early.” He reminded me, kindly.   
“Thanks for that.” I slid up so my head was back on the pillow and lay on my side, facing Sonny with my knees bent.   
Sonny was due in court to testify at eleven the next day, which meant he didn’t have to go into work until afterwards. I, on the other hand, had to wake up at six, which was only five hours away.   
“Good talk.” He kissed me before turning off the light.   
I scoffed, pulling my pillow close to me. Sonny lay on his back and tucked his arm under his head. His hand settled on my knee, softly brushing his thumb against my skin.   
I opened my mouth and spoke into the darkness. “I love you.”   
My alarm went off too early, like alarms usually did.   
I groaned and rolled back over after I had shut it off. But I knew if I fell asleep, really fell asleep, I would have stayed in bed until noon.   
I blinked in the darkness and reached over for my glasses. I didn’t know if my alarm had woken Sonny; he hadn’t made a movement or a noise. I glanced over to him. He was lying on his stomach, head turned away but his arm had been outstretched, reaching for my body.   
His ruffled bedhead looked so soft, I wanted to run my fingers through it. I just always wanted my hands on him, I wanted contact with him.   
I resisted the temptation, in fear that I would wake him at the early hour on his day off. Instead, I slipped my feet out of the bed and forced myself to get out of the cosy bed.   
I had already put my shower stuff in his bathroom the night before so I stumbled my way in to get ready. I clicked the shower on and tied up my hair to avoid getting it wet.   
In my head, I ran down all the things I had to do whilst I showered. I had to get ready, eat, leave, get to work, start my dailies. Throughout the day I had three one hour sessions and a group session to lead and I had a mountain of paperwork I had to get through before going on my Christmas break. It was already the Tuesday fifteenth and I was leaving for Scotland on the twenty second.   
And of course I still had social things to do. It was Sonny’s office thing in two days and then the ward staff were having a Christmas night out on the Saturday night that I had promised I would attend because I had missed the one the year before. And then I had to see my friends, and more importantly Roscoe and Lola.   
I was just glad that I had started my Christmas shopping early and I had nothing left to buy.   
I dried off and wrapped my towel tight around me before going back into Sonny’s bedroom. He was still in the exact same position I had left him in.   
My bag was next to his side of the bed, so I had to creep round beside him to retrieve my makeup bag. I stooped down, rummaging for it just as I heard a soft groan coming from Sonny.   
I glanced up with a smile to see him stir. His eyes prised open, sleepily dry, and he rolled over. It took him a few seconds to come round.   
“Morning.” I spoke softly, watching as he rubbed at his eyes. “Did I wake you?”   
He made an unsure noise. “It’s alright.”   
“Go back to sleep, I’m just getting ready.”   
“’Kay.” He shifted to lie on his back.   
I smiled at his sweet morning self. He reached his arm out, wanting my hand in his. I gave him my hand as I stood up, placing my makeup bag on his bedside table when he pouted his mouth for a kiss.   
I leant down to press my lips against his, unprepared when he pulled his arm around my waist, yanking me to lie on top of his body.   
I half shrieked, half laughed as I toppled. “Sonny, I’m in a towel. I’m getting you all wet.”   
He snorted a laugh, keeping his face close to mine. “That’s my line.”   
I giggled as he cupped my bum, sliding his hands up my thighs to get under my towel. “Stop. I need to get ready.”   
I didn’t make a move to get off of him though.   
“I’m not stopping you.” He mumbled against my jaw. With a sigh, I gave him one more kiss, rolled off of him and grabbed my makeup.   
I sat at his desk, facing towards his window for some light and tidily folded away his law books so I didn’t get anything on them. I found putting on my makeup really therapeutic, if I was honest. It wasn’t a chore for me. It was just a part of my routine, a way of getting me ready for the day.   
It was only when I put my glasses back on that I saw he had been staring at me. I made a face at him as I dusted my skin with powder. “What?”   
Sonny had propped himself up a little bit on the pillows, his right hand supported his head, knuckles indenting the skin below his cheekbone. He gave me his half smile, showing off his simples cheeks.   
“I like watching you do your makeup.” He shrugged, still smiling. “It’s cute.”   
My chest fluttered at his words but I rolled my eyes at him. “Go back to sleep, odd bod.” I closed over my compact and chucked it into the bag.   
Although he was smiling, his eyes were still puffy from sleepiness. It wasn’t that he was always tired, which was expected with all the work and the studying he had to do, but he could sleep well. He was never a toss and turn kind of guy. As soon as he decided he wanted to sleep, he did; that could be in bed, on the sofa, in the car, at his desk.   
“I’m going to,” he pushed himself down the bed a little bit more so that the sheets covered up to his sternum. “But I can’t close my eyes until you get dressed.”   
I laughed at his morning braveness and got up to get my clothes that I had hung up the night before. I ignored his protests when I pulled on my underwear under my towel and faced away from him to put on my bra.   
I got dressed in my black trousers and patterned shirt before heading into the kitchen to let Sonny continue his snooze. I checked through my emails whilst making some toast and coffee. There was nothing that I had to act on straight away, but there was an admittance overnight into the ward. We would have to review his case and decided on a treatment plan, and who was going to treat them.   
“I brought you some tea.” I placed the mug on the cabinet next to Sonny after I had finished breakfast.   
“No coffee?”   
“Nope. You’re supposed to be having a long lie. It’s not even half seven yet.” I packed my things away in my bag and slipped my feet into my heels.   
I slicked my lipstick on whilst he commented on the fact that tea was just a boring way to avoid coffee but he drank it anyway.   
“Where’s my jacket?” I asked him as I threw my phone into my handbag, ready to leave.   
“In the closet in the hall. That you ready to go?”   
I nodded, resting a knee on the mattress beside him.   
“I’ll see you on Thursday then?” his hand reached for my thigh and squeezed in teasing. He knew I was nervous about the office party. But he also knew it would be fine.   
I twisted the strand of hair that had already fallen out of the clip I had piled my hair into. “Yes. Ninety percent chance.”   
“Just ninety?” he raised his eyebrows.   
“Okay, ninety five.” I reasoned. “I have to go. I’ll see you later.”  
He hooked his finger in the gap of the buttons in my shirt, earning a suppressed smile from me, and pulled me towards him.   
“I’ve got lipstick on.” I whispered, my minty breath fanning across his face.   
With a soft, but loving kiss, he grinned. “I’ve always thought pink was a good colour for me.”


	10. Christmas Party

It was crowded in the elevator.   
There were two police officers and three other non-uniformed people squashed in there with me. It was busy everywhere in the station, actually. From the second I walked through the doors, there were people milling about. The desk officer was polite as he directed me to the right floor and rolled his eyes when a guy on a phone walked straight into me.   
I stepped out of the lift and glanced up and down the corridor to look for Sonny’s department. I was thankful for the sign above the door that read ‘Special Victims Unit’. Anxiously, I chewed the inside of my cheek, tucking my hands into my thick black jacket.   
I had come straight from work, having had to work slightly later for the week in order to get my paperwork done in time for me leaving. My inability to leave work earlier, as I had originally planned, meant that I had to freshen up, change my shirt and adapt my make up a little in the office.   
Amanda wasn’t going to be at the party, so it was literally just me, Sonny and a hell of a lot of people I didn’t know.  
Despite this, I followed the advice I gave to patients when they were facing anxiety over situations like this. The absolute worst case scenario would be Sonny’s workmates not liking me. And past that? Nothing. I knew that Sonny’s opinion of me wouldn’t be altered based upon the reactions of his colleagues. From what he had said, his family had liked me, I had gotten on with the handful of people I had met from his law course and with Amanda. There was no reason these detectives would take a distinct dislike to me.   
And I knew all this, I kept all these thoughts in my head all throughout my day.   
But still.   
This was his team. He spent more time with them than anyone else in the world. They were involved in intense situations, saw Sonny when he was at fault, in danger, angry, devastated, scared. They were important to him. So it would have to be important to me.   
With a breath- a deep, trying-to-be-calming breath- I walked through the double doors into the department.   
I hadn’t really been in a police station before. Any involvements I had had with the police through work, they had come to the hospital and I had gone to court, bypassing the need for me to actually come into the stations.   
I glanced around, taking in the kind of seventies décor vibe that they had going on. I mean, except from the computers and massive screens and projectors and iPads that were dotted around the room. But they also had big whiteboards for analogue detectiving. There were doors leading to, what I assumed to be, another department and then a lot more doors that, again I assumed, led to offices and those cool interrogation rooms with two way mirrors.   
There was a measly amount of tinsel decorating the doors, but apart from that, and the tiny, tiny Christmas tree that was on one of the desks, the place was untouched by Christmas.   
The desks that filled the area were almost all empty, apart from three. Two guys in suits were in the far corner, pouring over open files as if trying to decipher a cop’s messy handwriting. The other guy, sitting directly in the middle was looking up at me.  
He was slouched in his seat, which instantly made me want to tell him the effects off poor desk posture on the back, but I refrained. With his black jeans and black crew neck sweater, he looked more like security than police. Internally, I wondered why Sonny dressed so formally.   
“Raina, right?” he raised his eyebrows at me and stood up from his chair.   
Thrown a little, I nodded. “Uh, yeah.”  
“Carisi’s girl.” He smiled and outstretched his hand. “You look just like your picture.” He was older, maybe in his fifties. Immediately with the grip of my hand, I felt the authority around him. He was an old timer if I ever saw one.   
“I guess.” I let myself laugh at the comment and raised my eyebrows at the mention of a photograph. “Picture?”   
“The one on Carisi’s phone. Odafin Tutuola. Just call me Fin, I work with your boy.” He explained, perching on the edge of the desk. I knew what photo he was talking about now. It was from a day we went to Madison Square Park. It was the background on his phone. Not the lock screen; he had said he didn’t want people he encountered on the job to see it, just in case. “Probably talked about me as the handsome, badass one.”   
Again, I laughed. “Yeah, now that you mention it, that’s exactly what he said. Also, that he wished he could be more like you.”  
“Gotta join the club.” He kept up the joke, immediately putting me at ease.   
I found that police officers fell in two categories. Either they made you feel at ease or they made you feel on edge. That was it. And I guess, they had to use both of these sides, but every officer fell into either one naturally.   
“Raina.” I heard Sonny’s voice behind me. I turned to see him coming in the doors, looking just a little tired, but mostly relaxed. “Sorry, I was on the phone.”   
His hand clutched my side and he leant down to kiss me briefly. He was always very open in public, where I tended not to instigate anything when there were others around.   
When I had mentioned this to my friends a month or so before, Piper asked if it was because I wasn’t into him. But that wasn’t it. I think it was more the unfamiliarity of public affection. The guys I had dated in the years previous either didn’t last long enough for it to become easy or I was always almost hidden. Like the handful of guys I had seen wanted something casual, no strings in which affection didn’t have much of a place.   
Whereas with Sonny, it was like he was proud of me. Again, unfamiliar.   
“It’s fine. I was meeting one of your wonderful colleagues.” I pulled back from him, referring to Fin, who was hiding a laugh.   
“Uh. O-kay.” Sonny squinted between the two of us. “You wanna leave your stuff here?”   
“Not to be a pain in the arse but I’ve got files in my bag.” I told him and he got where I was going.   
“Confidential, right. You can put it in my locker.” He nodded to one of the back rooms. “Then we can head down to the party, everyone else is down there.”   
“I could have met you there, you didn’t need to wait for me.” I shrugged my jacket off and draped it over the back of Sonny’s chair, over his suit jacket.   
“We had a little bit of paperwork to clear up. Hopefully winding down for Christmas, you know?” Fin went back to his desk. “I’ll wait for you guys here. I just got one more page to type up.”   
Sonny nudged me towards the room where there were a ton of lockers and benches, as if it was a room directly stolen from a gym.   
“Is that your ‘meeting people’ outfit now?” He laughed as he unlocked the padlock for his locker.   
I pinched the top of his arm. He was referring to the star printed shirt I was wearing, which was the same one that I had worn to meet his family. Except this time it was tucked into a black pencil skirt and I was wearing heeled shoes instead of boots.   
“Don’t mess with what works.” I reasoned just as I fetched my phone from my bag.   
“You’re not on call, are you?” he asked, watching me.   
“Uh, not technically. But I figured if this goes badly I can fake a crisis and leave.” I grinned, trying to be cute even though I was telling the absolute truth.   
“Rai, it’s not going to go badly. You don’t need the phone.” He tried to prise it from my hand but I clung onto it desperately.   
“I do! What if I get asked something like what do I think of the stock markets? I’d rather fake a phone call than admit that I don’t understand stocks and shares and bonds.” I whined at him, practically hanging from his wrist.   
“I’m a cop, Rai, not a Wall Street dick.”  
“Fine. What if I’m asked if I’ve ever committed a crime? Then I’d need a fake crisis.”   
“But you never have committed a crime.”   
“That you know of.” I pointed out, even though he was right. He just laughed, tearing the device from my grip. He held it above his head, too high for me to reach, even in my heels. “Okay, what if I keep it in my pocket all night?”   
“You don’t have pockets.” He surveyed my skirt.   
“Another reason that no pockets on women’s clothing is idiotic.” I groaned.   
He shook his head, smiling at me. “How about I keep it in my pocket? Cause I’m a guy and I have a variety of pockets, and if you’re having a seriously horrible time then I’ll let you know that your phone is ringing.”   
I fell against him, pressing myself against his chest. “I’d love you forever.”   
“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to bribe you to have that happen, but that’ll do,” he said, rolling his eyes and slipping my phone in his pocket.   
I wrapped my arms around his waist, leaning against him. “Promise that you’ll rescue me if I put my foot in my mouth?” I whispered.   
Sonny kissed the tip of my nose. “Without a doubt.”  
With a slight edge of reluctance, I spoke again. “Let’s go then.”   
He laughed and took my hand in his. We walked back to the pen, got Fin and went to the elevator. Fin pressed the B button as we got in the lift.   
“The party’s in the basement?” I frowned.   
“Uh, yeah.” Fin shared a look with Sonny which made me raise my eyebrows in question. In the basement was the…  
“You’re having your Christmas party in the morgue?” I crinkled my nose in equal parts confusion, disgust and amusement.   
“I thought you’d definitely bail if I mentioned that.” Sonny kissed the back of my hand.   
I just laughed. “Please. I went to med school, remember? I’ve cut up my fair share of dead bodies.”  
Sonny chuckled at that as Fin made a face just as we got to the basement floor. The doors slid open and I was surprised at the party atmosphere that was already apparent.   
There was muted music in the morgue. Punch bowls and glasses were laid out on one of the metal tables and Christmas decorations were hung up everywhere; draped on the handles of the compartments and the doors and… just everywhere. It was totally different to the offices.   
“Let’s get a drink.” Sony squeezed my hand and we made a beeline for the drinks table. He poured me out a cup of the punch. I almost choked on my first mouthful.   
“Jeez that’s strong.” I raised my eyebrows at the red liquid. “Good thing we’re not driving home.”   
Sonny tasted his and made a similar expression to mine. “Christ. Won’t be finishing that very quickly.”   
“You never drink the punch at these things.” A voice from behind us made me turn around. I turned to see Olivia Benson. I already knew who she was from a handful of pictures in the papers. She exuded genuine authority but not in an obnoxious way, just in a ‘this job is my life and you better respect the fuck out of me’ kind of way.   
And I did respect her. From what Sonny had told me, she was an advocate for any victim and fought hard for justice, even when that meant pissing off the powers that be.   
But she was looking at us with an amused smile. She must have been on the tasting end of the punch a few times.   
“Yeah, I think I’m gonna stick with a soda.” I grimaced at the bright red liquid floating in the cup.   
“Just put them down and move away. There’s no point persevering with this, trust me.” She motioned for us to join her in her crossing to another man, one Fin had already made his way to. They were standing a little further from the entrance, leaning against the worktop with plastic Christmas themed cups in their hands.   
“Lieutenant, this is my girlfriend, Raina Callum. Rai, this is our Lieutenant, Olivia Benson.” Sonny introduced us as we walked.   
“Very nice to meet you. Heard a lot about you.” She smiled politely at me. Sonny frowned at her sentence but said nothing. “Mostly from Rollins if I’m honest.”  
“Oh, right. Yeah. Kinda weird to know that but alright.” I laughed, speaking candidly. “I heard all about you guys. From Sonny and Amanda.”  
Sonny passed me a can of lemonade and it opened up with a hiss just as we reached Fin and the other man. I could just about see Sonny open his mouth to introduce us but he was beaten to it.   
“Mike Dodds.” He reached his hand out for me to shake. “Raina, yeah?”  
I nodded. “That’s me.”  
Again, there was the ‘nice to meet you’ exchange.   
“Is Rollins coming?” Mike glanced between Olivia and Fin but they both shrugged.   
“Uh, she texted me this afternoon and said she probably wasn’t gonna be here.” I offered. “Jessie’s got colic.”  
“Oh yeah, Carisi said you guys went over the other night.” Fin nodded.   
“Is everything okay with the baby?” Olivia questioned, taking a drink from the cup Fin had handed her.   
“Yeah, she just got new mom paranoid.” Sonny leant his hand on the worktop, just behind my back. “Needed a doc’s opinion.”   
“She had a bit of a cough. Jessie, I mean. Not Amanda.” I clarified. “But her temperature was fine so we just steamed up the bathroom and sat with her for a bit and it cleared up. But she’s been colicky for a few days now. You just gotta ride it out.”   
“Did you do paediatrics?” Mike asked me.   
For a second, I felt a little insecure, as if he was asking how the hell I would know what to do with a baby? I was twenty nine, childless and a psychiatrist. But that was just the overthinking part in me. He didn’t mean anything by it.   
“I did rotations in med school, I haven’t done it in years. But one of my sisters had horrific colic for, like, months and used to get colds so I spent a lot of time in steamed up bathrooms with her.” I explained. Felicity was a poorly kid. She would always get whatever was going round. Even now, she would pick up bugs and germs.   
Conversation ran smoothly, we moved from work talk to general chat.   
I slipped into it comfortably. The tension in my shoulders eased- didn’t disappear- but lessened. It was just a relaxed situation. I was doing okay.   
“Oh, there’s Barba.” Olivia said, looking towards the door, gesturing for this man to join us. He was dressed impeccably, with a three piece suit and shinier shows than I had ever seen. But he also looked a little tired; soft bags under his eyes, creases in his forehead, top button undone and a loosened tie.   
“Feliz Navidad.” He spoke, quite heavily accented. “What are we all drinking?”   
His eyes were just the tiniest bit glazed, giving away the how many units of alcohol he had already consumed before arriving.   
“Just stay away from the punch. There’s no need to see you like that, thank you.” Olivia brushed her hair from her eyes, slightly amused.   
“Have your own little party before this, Councillor?” Sonny joked.   
Ah. Barba. Councillor. He was their ADA. I remembered hearing his name, I recognised his photo from the news. Sonny talked about him like he was some sort of miracle worker with cases, a wizard in the court room. I had never had a dealing with him. The only things I knew of him were the mentions from Sonny and the clips on the news.   
“Office party, Carisi. Is it really Christmas without the damned forced interactions? No offence.” He glanced round us before his eyes settled on mine. They narrowed a little as he studied me. “I don’t know you.”   
“This is my girlfriend, Raina Callum.” Sonny glance down to me with a smile. “Raina, this is-  
“Rafael Barba. Encantado.” He reached his hand across, stretching past the others.   
“Hi.” I gave him my hand with a smile. I was more than surprised when he kissed the back of my hand, as if I was some sort of Royal, before letting my palm go. I stopped myself from laughing and folded my hands behind me, leaning against the worktop.  
“Everything wrapped up at the office, Barba?” Fin questioned, his voice loud as he did so.   
“As much as they can be. No doubt we’ll be working right up to Christmas Eve.” Barba grumbled a little bit. They all nodded, grudgingly.   
“Oh, come on, crime never sleeps, right?” I nudged Sonny. “You guys probably love your jobs. It’s just getting to the end of year slump.”  
“End of year slump?” Mike questioned.   
“Yeah, I mean. It’s like the week before you go on vacation, and you’re, like, exhausted. It’s the same with Christmas. Which is why so many people get so down. As well as family things and the pressure that you’re supposed to be having an amazing, festive time.” I rattled out before realising I was doing work chat.   
“I feel like I’ve just been analysed.” Fin stared at me, squinting a little in suspicion.   
“You have. She does this all the time.” Sonny groaned, shaking his head.   
“What is it you do? Psychologist, psychic?” Barba raised his eyebrows at me. I couldn’t tell if I was being judged or not.   
“Psychiatrist.” I corrected.   
Again, the raised eyebrows. “Carisi, why is you’ve wittered on about literally every aspect of your life and yet you fail to mention your beautiful, Doctor girlfriend?”   
I felt myself flush a little, but none of them seemed to notice, they just laughed. Obviously, this was just how Barba was; offhand and flippant.   
“Because you tell me shut up literally all the time.” Sonny rolled his eyes at the lawyer. “So I guessed there was no point mentioning her around you.”  
I wrapped my arm around his waist and smiled up at his annoyance with his colleague. “You guys must not be that busy if you get to chit chat all the time.” Their stare responses made me laugh. “Kidding.”   
The night carried on easily. We moved to one of the offices down in the basement to sit down and chatter. I was introduced to a lot of people. Some of them I knew I would never ever see again. Some of them, like Sonny’s team, I knew I’d be seeing again at some point. I had talked about travel with Mike and kids with Olivia and oddly, food with Fin. And with Barba, he was in and out of conversations as his drinks became more frequent. He was still standing though- which was impressive, honestly.   
I was getting tired, leaning against Sonny with his arm on the back of the chair. “You wanna go?”   
“I just have a million and one things to do tomorrow.” I looked up at him through my lashes and nudged my glasses up my nose a little. “And I’m supposed to write a recommendation for a student that was with us and I totally blanked and-”  
“It’s almost midnight, I think we can safely duck out, sweetheart.” He kissed my hair.   
I stifled my yawn, hiding my mouth with my hand. “Thanks. Honestly, flying halfway across the world is, like, the last thing I need right now.”   
“Well, right now, why don’t we just settle on going back to yours and going to bed?” Sonny tipped my chin up and kissed me softly. “Come on.”   
“I’m just gonna get us a taxi. Can’t be arsed going for the train.” I sat up in my chair, rubbing my eye a little to waken me a bit.   
Sonny laughed at me. “You know you get more Scottish when you’re tired. Your accent goes into over drive.”   
“So does yours.” I pinched his thigh in retaliation of him making fun of me. Still, he laughed and captured my wrist to stop me from jabbing him.   
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have an accent.”   
I scoffed and stood up, pulling him with me. “You bloody well do.”  
Instead of a response, he just mimicked my words in jest, grabbing his jacket from the back of his seat. He called over to Fin and Mike, who were deep in conversation with some other detectives from a different department, and let them know we were leaving. They both distractedly raised their hands in goodbye. I smiled at them as Sonny took my hand and led me to the elevator.   
“You survived it.” Sonny brought my hand to his mouth and kissed my fingers softly. I smiled and leant against the mirrored side of the elevator as we waited for it to move up the way to his floor.   
“I am a survivor. I think we’re done with the introductions now. We got them out of the way.” I was relieved thinking about it.   
“I haven’t met your family.” He let go of my hand but settled his palm beside my shoulder and leant over me.   
I scoffed, close to his face. “Yeah, well, you might meet them in about ten years. They’ve never come over so unless you want to take a spontaneous trip to sunny, sunny Scotland, you won’t meet them.”   
His furrowed brow and confused look was expected. I knew it was a surprise to him that my family hadn’t come over. I think it would have been unimaginable to see his family just once a year.   
“They’ve never visited?”   
“My grandparents came over a few years ago. But not my parents. They’ve both got families. It’s expensive.”   
He kissed my nose and I could feel his pity. “But you’re their family.”   
“I’ve made my own family over here.”   
It was true. I had Sita and Piper and Tilly. Those girls were my family from the get go. And then they started their own families and I treated their kids like my niece and nephew. And now I had Sonny. I had enough. I had what I needed.   
I could see him open his mouth to say something else but I didn’t need to hear it. I was too tired to explain them. So I kissed him just to shut him up.   
It was barely more than a peck but Sonny seemed to fall into it.  
We were sleepy and relieved to have the evening gone well and festively buzzed. I didn’t push him away when he kissed down my neck, and let him wrap his arms around my shoulders and walk behind me as we left the elevator to go to his offices.   
I hooked my hands on his arms and tilted my head as he kissed the spot just behind my ear, both of us laughing as we walked.   
It was only when we saw Olivia and Barba sitting at Fin’s desk that we untangled ourselves from one another.   
“Lieutenant.” Sonny cleared his throat, stepping away from me just a little. “We thought you had gone home.”   
I looked up to see Sonny’s cheeks flushed; I would have been the same if it was my boss who just saw us kissing.  
“No, Carisi, I was just finishing up something when Barba came up.” Olivia got up from sitting on the desk and motioned to the councillor who was holding his head, sitting in Fin’s chair.   
“Hangover started already, Barba?” I laughed, getting my jacket from the back of Sonny’s chair.   
He just responded with a grunt, not looking up.   
“In fact, if you guys are leaving then you can get a cab together. Or at least make sure he doesn’t step out in front of one.” Olivia suggested. Sonny and I shared a look and I suppressed my smile at his dread. She caught sight of it and spoke, hushed. “It’s not a question, Carisi.”  
“Right away, Lieu.” He almost sighed with a nod. “Barba, you ready to go?”   
Barba stood reluctantly and rolled his neck, looking tense as he did so. “I suppose.” He tucked his hands in the pockets of his long jacket.   
“Babe, I need my bag.” I reminded Sonny.   
“Right.” He ignored Barba’s passive aggressive sigh and emptied his pockets onto his desk; my phone, his phone, his wallet and then his keys. He passed me my phone and his keys for me to go and get my bag from his pretty much otherwise empty locker.   
I went through to the back room and used the tiny key to open up the locker. I caught sight of myself in the small mirror on the inside of his locker. I looked tired. And a little old. I sighed, frowning at my face and widened my eyes in an attempt to look more awake.   
I reached into my bag to slick on some lipstick, pointless as it seemed due to the fact we were at the end of the night, but I really did look tired. Before capping the lipstick, I drew a love heart on the mirror and marked my initials in the corner, knowing he would find it when he went to work the next day.   
I chucked the lipstick into my bag and closed over the locker before returning to them.   
“Ready?” I breezed into the room, tossing Sonny his keys.   
“They sure are. And happy as hell too.” Olivia mocked their tired, less than satisfied expressions. “It’s was great meeting you, I hope I see you again soon.”   
I grinned. “For sure. Hope you have a good Christmas.”   
“I hope Scotland goes well.”   
“As do I.” I smiled, hooking my arm in Sonny’s. He and Barba both said goodnight to the Lieutenant and she said she’d see them, feeling fresh, the next day.   
We headed for the elevator and rode down to the ground floor in almost silence. It was only when we stepped outside that Sonny realised he had left his phone on his desk.   
“I’ll be back in a sec.” He squeezed my hand as it fell away from holding his arm.   
“God, Carisi, you’re not shipping off to ‘Nam. You’re going up a few flights of stairs.” Barba remarked with a roll of his eyes.   
My boyfriend narrowed his eyes at Barba. “You’re mean when you drink.”  
“Not when I drink sherry. And if I drink tequila, I tend to do karaoke.” He mused, almost pouting.   
Sonny ignored him and went inside. I just laughed at their exchange and leant against the wall of the precinct. Barba joined me, staring out at the traffic. There were no available cabs passing, because it was Christmas obviously.   
“I hate December.”   
I raised my eyebrows. “Really? I love winter. It’s my favourite season. Especially here. Why don’t you like it?”   
“For all the reasons you said earlier.” He looked over at me. “The family things, the pressure, the expectation for us all to be off the charts happy just because of one day.”   
“I can imagine there’s a lot of pressure all the time in your job.” I turned my head. “I mean, from what Sonny says it’s non stop.”   
“Mm.” he pursed his mouth. I could feel him watching me, and I felt just a tiny bit on edge. But weirdly giddy as well.   
“You should see someone, if you don’t already. I know they,” I motioned into the precinct to generalise the police, “have someone to talk to if they have to. Do the lawyers?”   
“I’m not one for an emotional circle jerk.” He dismissed me abrasively.   
A slightly shocked laugh tumbled from my mouth. “I get that impression. But… about a quarter of my outpatients are professionals in high stress jobs. Circle jerk or not, it’s helpful.”   
“I’m sure.” He regarded me, still a little hazy in the eye.   
“Or at least make sure you relax.” I pulled my jacket tight around me, looking back out to the road. He turned to lean his shoulder on the wall.   
“And what would you prescribe, Doctor?”   
I ignored the flirty tone of his voice and didn’t look at him. “Exercise, proper sleep and diet of course. Essential oils in a bath or shower have proven to be effective. Orange scented is supposed to stimulate happiness. Lavender, rose and bergamot are good too. Meditation.”  
“I tried meditation before. It just stressed me out. All those idiots umming and omming just irritated me.” He grumbled, making me laugh.   
“Well one that you probably need, like Sonny, is blackout of technology. Just half an hour, reading or doing nothing, or even listening to some music, away from your phone.”   
“Not possible in my job, Miss Callum.” He shook his head.   
“I think the world will go on without you for twenty minutes a day.” I yawned.   
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him rub the back of his neck again, pushing down on the muscles.   
“Sore neck?” I asked him.   
He stopped what he was doing, dropped his hand and sighed. “Too much time hunched over my desk.”   
“If you got time to relax every day then you might have time to fit in a massage.” I pointed out, knowing my attempts at changing this stressed out lawyer were entirely fruitless.   
“Are you offering a massage right now?” he raised his eyebrows. “Because I think I could relax with that.”   
I was suddenly aware how close he was to me. He wasn’t being creepy or weird. He was just drunk and tired. I didn’t feel threatened, but it was still misplaced flirtations. And there wasn’t even a part of me that felt tempted, even though he was a funny, good looking professional. There was nothing in me that wanted anything more or different to what I had with Sonny. Not even a little bit.   
At his words, I cleared my throat, moving away from him a fraction. With as kind a smile as I could muster, I cleared up any drunken confusion he might have been facing. “I’m dating your colleague. Not only that, I’m very much in love with him. So I’m gonna have to say no to the massaging. But thanks for the offer.”   
He laughed shortly. “Forgive me, I’m drunker than I thought. I didn’t mean to be so creepy. I’ve got a solid fifteen years on you.”   
I smiled. “It’s okay. It wouldn’t be an age thing anyway. I don’t date guys who have more than one phone.”  
He laughed and settled himself a safer distance away from me, just as Sonny came out.   
“No cabs pass yet?” He raised his eyebrows at us.   
I outstretched my arms in evidence of the empty streets. “Yeah, I got in one, went home and came back in the time it took you to get your phone.”   
“You guys are mean.”


	11. Don't Miss Me

“So good.” I wiped my mouth to clear away the crumbs of the chocolate cheesecake. Sonny had picked up dessert from the deli on his block and we had ordered a pizza for the night before I left to go home.   
Sonny practically licked his plate clean of his slice of cheesecake and stretched over my legs to place it on the table.  
We were stretched out on his sofa, him in the middle with my feet in his lap and me, leaning back against the arm of the couch. Guppy was curled up on her bed that I had placed in the corner.   
Sonny was pretty much taking over from me when I was away. Instead of me taking the cat upstate to force upon Piper and her family (Lola overloved Guppy and the black cat was always glad to be away from the kid), Sonny had reasoned it was easier to just take Guppy himself.   
So I figured he was going to look in on her, but no, he said it was fine to keep her at his apartment. Which I was surprised by. They still weren’t the best of friends but apparently it was a blossoming relationship.  
“What time do we need to leave tomorrow?” Sonny asked me, rubbing his hands over my ankles.   
He was taking me to the airport for my flight, I was ditching my car along with my cat with him. I figured it was better for him to use it than it just lie at my apartment. It also meant he could drive home for Christmas which was easier than manoeuvring public transport around the holidays.   
“Probably eight.” I pondered. My flight left at midday and the one thing I hated was being late, especially for flights. It was already past midnight. I had gone home after work just to change and get my car and the cat before heading straight to Sonny’s. He had left me his key, in case he worked late. Which he did.  
I wasn’t sure if the exchanging of keys thing was supposed to be more of a big deal than we had made it. I had put a spare key in his drawer in case of an emergency when I was away. Our exchange wasn’t for romantic reasons, it was purely for practicality.   
“That’s not even eight hours away.” he whined at me. We both needed this Christmas break; even if we only had a few days off each.   
“Well, if you didn’t jump me as soon as you got in the door then we might have already been asleep.” I dug my heel into his thigh, laughing at his self-satisfied smirk. His shirt was still lying on the floor by the entryway.   
“I can catch up on my sleep when I retire. Seeing you naked is worth it.” He mused. I prodded his with my toes to get his attention.   
“You know I’m perfectly capable of getting to the airport myself. I’ve done it for years.” I twisted the braid of my hair around my fingers. It was still damp. I had showered and plaited my hair whilst waiting for Sonny to get home.  
He squeezed my shin. “I want to take you.”  
I felt warm inside. Oh man, this guy was great.   
I mean, maybe it was a low standard to be held to; just take me to the airport and actually feel something about me leaving at Christmas, but he was doing great in the whole boyfriend role. I was into it.   
I shifted to sit up, tucking my feet beneath me. “You’re pretty great, you know that?” I tucked my head into the crook of his neck. I shook as he chuckled, moving his arm to wrap around my waist.   
“Same goes to you.” His voice was muffled against my hair. “Love you, doll.”   
I smiled and set my hand against his chest, sliding down to clutch at his stomach. “Also, do you want to do presents now or when I come home?”   
He had been desperately trying to figure out what I had gotten him, like an overexcited child, for weeks- ever since I had stopped him from coming into my apartment so I could hide the gifts when he came over unannounced.  
We had both decided not to go nuts on the gifts, and instead, we went out the week after Thanksgiving to a restaurant on the Upper West Side- one that was expensive and fancy as fuck but had the most amazing food. That was our Christmas celebration.   
“Now. If you have them.” He pushed me up, to see my face. Laughing, I told him that indeed I did have them, and we both went to fetch the gifts.   
“I thought we agreed nothing big.” Sonny’s voice was accusatory as he eyed the two parcels I had set on the table. They were wrapped, carefully, in patterned red paper with ribbon. One was about two foot high, but the other was small. I wondered if he had guess what it was yet.   
“It’s not big. Not really. You’ll see when you unwrap it, Detective.” I crossed my legs under me.  
I had no clue what mine were. I also had two, wrapped…less carefully but with just as much love. One was small, like a jewellery box and I really hoped he hadn’t gone full crazy and bought a ring. I already had one awkwardly accepted engagement under my belt, I did not need another. The other looked more miscellaneous, safer- clothes or something.  
“You go first.” I urged him, biting my lip with a grin.   
“Nope.” He passed me my gifts. “You.”  
Normally, I would have been the polite one and insisted that we take turns but my festive excitement was too much to bear so I started ripping at the larger package first.   
It was a set of the softest grey and white checked pyjamas. It was a button up shirt top, but in a stretchy, jersey like material instead of the stiffness of normal flannel.   
“I know you hate sleeping naked.” He spoke cheekily, his elbow propped up on the back of the sofa. He was watching me, happily.   
I laughed. “Thank you.”   
“You know, I was gonna get you a Fordham sweatshirt, seeing as you always wear mine but-”  
“No. I like wearing yours because it’s yours.” I murmured, pressing the soft material of the pyjamas to my face, just to feel them again.   
“Yeah, you mentioned that. So I ditched that idea and just went with the PJs.” He reasoned. “Next one.”   
I rolled my eyes at his impatience and set my pyjamas down before tearing apart the next gift.   
I pulled open the box that I had unwrapped, stopping breathing for just a hesitant second, and exhaled in relief to see the earrings. Oh god, they were so cute. Each earing had a cluster of three stars, like a constellation in a silver metal.   
“Because of-”  
“My shirt. I got it.” I laughed, thinking of his comments of my attire the week before. I did wear a lot of star prints; scarves, shirts, t-shirts, socks. “You’re a good shopper, Dominick Carisi. I love them.”   
He grinned at me, happy with himself. “By the way, you normally only call me Dominick when you’re annoyed or when we’re in bed so when I hear you say it now I feel like I should either run or have a boner.”   
He caught me off guard with that and I laughed loudly. “Oh my god.” I kicked him on the thigh. “Just open your gifts.” I reached out for the big one first and I sat back, giddy, watching him unwrap it.   
He ripped the top half of it off and began to laugh as the picture of the miniature plastic basketball hoop came into view on the cardboard packaging. “It’s exactly what I need.”   
I giggled like a kid as he unpacked it. “Well, you like mine so much, I figured you could do with your own.”  
“You’re so cute. Thanks- I can imagine I’ll be using it a lot come February.” He opened up the packaging and peeked inside.   
He was talking about the Bar. It was soon approaching- just two or so months away. He was set, he was good with it, but it was an exam and he was nervous. Every so often he would have a crisis of self-confidence. It had become a habit, for me to work in my office on a recently undertaken research prospect and him to study at the kitchen table. We would both work well and when we got stressed we just went to find the other one. And we got reassurance before going back.   
I moved over to him and knelt by his side. “You’re going to be fine with the Bar, babe.” I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and leant my chin on him.   
He breathed in heavily and let go of the box to wrap his arm around my back, clutching my waist. “Thanks, Rai.” He kissed my cheek, pulling me onto his lap.   
“You’ve still got another present.” I motioned to the table, slipping my hand around the back of his neck. He clutched me to his body to stop me from falling from his lap when he reached for the other present.   
I rubbed my fingertips against the base of his head, feeling his hair soft against my skin, as he shifted me so he could open the gift. I watched as Sonny peeled at the wrapping and waited, slightly anxiously, for him to finish.   
He frowned a little and then smiled as he looked at the book in front of him. “It’s Slaughterhouse Five. I love this book.”   
“I know you do.” I opened the front cover to show him. “It’s a first edition. I thought it’d be a pretty cool one to add to your…” I gestured to the bursting bookshelf in front of us. “Ever growing collection.”   
I had found it, by chance, just weeks after we had started dating in a collectors shop when I was in the Village with Tilly. She was a huge book lover and had read every classic, cultural phenomenon, bestseller and indie gem that you could think of.  
He shook his head, smiling. “This is, like, the nicest gift ever.” His expression was slightly dazed as he flipped through the first few pages, glancing at the text. It was a little frayed, a little worse for wear but it was, in general, in good condition. “I love it. Thank you.” He peppered kissed on my cheek to get me to tilt my head up to him. “I love you.”   
“I love you too.” I kissed him softly. “Thank you for my things, they’re so thoughtful.”   
“Back at you.” He rubbed his hand up my thigh. “I think we’re pretty good together.”   
“I feel the same way.” I laughed at his oddly timed statement and buried my head in his neck, kissing along his skin. I took the book from his hand a dropped it onto the table, keeping my mouth on him. He slid me from his lap to lie on the sofa, hovering over me, knees on either side of my hips as we kissed, as I unzipped the hoodie he had pulled on over his bare torso, he pushed my baggy top off of my shoulder, kissing my skin.   
I was feeling so warm, so intense at that moment. I was all over the place. I was excited to be with Sonny. I was happy to be with Sonny. I was in love with Sonny. And I was tired too. And I was worried about going home. And I was worried about coming back. And I was…every emotion that ran in between the scales. I was everything.   
I cupped his face in my hands, looking at him when he moved away from me a tiny bit to catch his breath. Embarrassingly, I could feel my eyes prickle behind my glasses. My nose stung a bit as I could feel myself getting emotional. “I love you.” I croaked, just watching him.   
Sonny’s expression moved from caught up in lust to concern in less than a second. Confusion swam over his face, his brow furrowed. His tongue darted out to wet his lips, still watching me. “No…no crying. Why are you…? Are you okay?” he questioned me, whispering. His breath, still smelling of chocolate fanned over my face.   
I breathed in hard, trying to get my shaky breath back. “I…” I didn’t know where all these emotions were coming from. I was fine that day- just tired maybe. But now, being on the sofa with him, feeling so loved brought everything to the surface. “I just really don’t want to go home right now.” This time, it wasn’t just my eyes welling up- they spilled over too.   
“Hey.” He whispered, stroking my face. “Hey, it’s okay.” He dropped himself into the small space between my body and the back of the couch and pulled me towards him, so he could cuddle me, comfort me when I was overreacting to the thought of going home. “What’s going on?”   
Sonny’s voice was soft as he hooked his arm under my shoulder. His other hand trailed down my arm soothingly, trying to get me to talk.   
“I don’t even know.” I croaked, my throat ached as I tried to talk. “I just… suddenly felt like I really don’t want to go. I want to stay here. I don’t wanna have to deal with my family right now. I want to stay with you.”   
I felt so pathetic saying this, admitting this to him. I was a strong person. I didn’t cry about things like this. In fact I didn’t really cry that much.   
“It’s just a week,” he reassured me. “One week. I know that’s…weirdly…longer than we’ve been apart since we started seeing each other. But it’s not long. It’s not long at all.”  
“I know.” I mumbled against his chest. “But I just…I don’t know. I can’t explain it.” Frustration bubbled over from me and I sniffed hard to prevent more crying. I could feel Sonny’s collarbone starting to get wet with my tears. My hands were tucked between us, brushing against his soft skin. I felt safe. Despite whatever weird emotions I was feeling, I knew I would be fine with him.   
Sonny spoke softly, telling me that he loved me, that I would be fine whilst away, that it would be over in no time and I would be back soon, back with him. These were all the things I already knew, but hearing him say it to me, gave me an entire reassurance.   
The soothing tone of his voice coupled with the gentle rubbing of his hand over my back and the warmth he was giving off lulled me into an increased sleepiness. Eventually, I fell asleep.   
I would have slept right through until my phone alarm blared on the sofa, curled up with Sonny, had his phone not blared into the silence.   
Both of us stirred, unsure at what the buzzing and ringing was for a few seconds.   
I had become used the ringtone of his phone over the months, but it was only about one every two weeks that it rang in the night.   
I came round a little bit as Sonny leant right over me, stretching for the phone that sat on the coffee table.   
Blearily, he looked at the caller ID and picked up, settling back down beside me. “Carisi.”   
I reached for his hand that was settled on my shoulder- my head was supported by the crook of his elbow having had fallen asleep with his arm around my shoulders. I laced my fingers into his, feeling him capture my hand as he spoke, finding out where he was needed.   
I pressed my lips against his chest, kissing his skin softly. I was so cosy, lying there with him, but my face felt unclean, stiff from crying earlier on. My eyes were still tired.   
“I’ll be there in a half hour.” Sonny promised before hanging up the phone. Clutching the phone in his hand, he wrapped his other arm around me, holding me close to his body.   
He just lay there for a moment, brushing his lip against my plaited hair. It was like he was getting himself prepared to leave.   
“Where you going?” I asked him, softly. It was so quiet and so dark that my voice sounded like a million decibels.   
“The missing kid from earlier.” He whispered. “It’s not the teacher, it’s the coach.”   
He had given me brief details when he had gotten home; about the boy who thought he was meeting up with his hot, female teacher but she was found in Vermont with her fiancé.   
“I won’t be able to take you to the airport.” His voice was so apologetic that I almost laughed.   
“Don’t worry about it.” I moved away from him to sit up. “I understand.”   
I looked down to him, taking in his face, his body like I wasn’t going to see him again. He looked back at me, eyes tired still and hair messy but beautiful. His hand was settled on his bare stomach, just above the waistband of his boxers.   
“I’m sorry about all that.” I waved my hand in wild gesture. “I think I’m just over tired.”   
He knew that wasn’t the only reason, just like I did, but he didn’t push. He just called me a moron for thinking I had to apologise.  
Sonny stretched himself out on the sofa, moaning in tiredness before sitting up abruptly. “Right, I gotta get ready.” He gave my cheek a quick kiss before standing up to go the bathroom.   
I rubbed at my eyes and checked the phone. At almost half three, I figured I could get another three hours of sleep at least before having to get up. I decided I was just going to call a cab to get to the airport.   
With a tired sigh, I cleared up, placing the plates in the sink for me to wash later and went towards the bedroom with my phone. I didn’t bother changing into pyjamas, I just crawled under the covers, sleepily.   
“You look like a little kid.” Sonny came into the room with a towel wrapped around his waist. Even in my tired state, I watched the way his body moved as he reached for clothes to change into. The muscles moved his shoulder blades as he pulled on his undershirt, covering himself up from my view. I closed my eyes and when I reopened them, he was almost fully dressed.  
I yawned, pulled the duvet up under my chin and yanked my sleeves over my hands.   
“Give me a text when you land.” Sonny tied his shoe, looking up at me. “And I’ll call you when I can.”   
“M’Kay.” I stretched my arm out for him. He smiled and knelt on the bed, lowering himself to me. He kissed me, gently but deeply- knowing he couldn’t start anything we didn’t have time to finish. “Be safe.” I pecked his nose.   
He gave me a soft smile. “Will do. Love you.”   
“I love you too.” I ran my hand up his arm and tugged at his shirt collar. “Don’t miss me too much.”


	12. Distance

I smoothed down Felicity’s wild blonde hair. She was tucked into my side; both of us curled up on the sofa watching Elf, a film we both loved. She didn’t, however, love It’s a Wonderful Life. We had watched it together for the first time when I arrived home. She cried.   
It was the twenty seventh- I was due back to New York in two days. It was time.   
I mean, the dread and upset I had felt about going home was absolutely misplaced. I just focussed on my sisters. Tara had changed so much in the year that I had been away. She had begun to look so much like her mother, smooth dark skin and beautiful dark curly hair. She was growing up so quick.   
And Felicity was the quickest kid ever, sharp as a tack and too smart for her teachers. I had arrived the day before her school nativity play so of course I had to sit through the three hour show just to hear her two lines as the innkeeper.   
I had split my time between the two parts of my family, as always, and also managed to squeeze in dinner with friends I only saw when I was at home. Honestly, I was tired. But I was more comfortable than I thought I was gonna be.   
There was some tension, some words of almost-arguments with both of my parents, but I ignored a lot, because again, I knew I had to focus on the girls.  
Felicity was suddenly becoming very aware that I only came home once a year, and the second I arrived she was already trying to convince me to move back. Every time I left to go to my dad’s she questioned me. She knew about Tara, of course, they actually went to the same schools, but she was too young to remember me being at home and actively moving between the two families.   
So I was at my mums and then the next day I would go to my dad’s to say goodbye before leaving the day after. It was, as always, a quick tour. But I was ready to go home. I was ready to see my New York family. I was ready to see Roscoe and Lola and my friends. I was ready to have a week off in the city, time to get ready for the New Year. And, of course, I was ready to see Sonny.   
We had talked a few times since I left, pretty much every two days on the phone and sporadic texts throughout the days. But we were both dealing with our families, that’s where we were focussing on.   
I had told both my parents about Sonny. Neither of them had ever met Craig, in fact I didn’t even tell them about our engagement until after it was called off. I think that influenced my mother’s comment of ‘Well let’s hope you keep this one long enough for us to meet him’. We had a mini spat about that. I didn’t love the fact that she thought I should be settled with kids.   
Her attitude was so hot and cold sometimes. When she separated from my father, men were the worst thing that could ever happen to a woman. She stressed the fact that I should build myself up before even thinking about giving a man an opportunity to tear me down. But then she met Steven and all of a sudden, getting married and having children was the best thing I could have done. And I guess it was a weird situation for me; I went from having this fiercely independent, if slightly misguided, young mother to seeing her become someone’s wife, someone else’s mother.   
My dad’s reaction was similar, but less negative, more non-committal. His wife Ave was more excited about it than either of my parents were.   
My sister’s reactions were also very different. Tara was ecstatic at the thought of me meeting someone. She was only ten or so when I split up from Craig, and she couldn’t understand why I didn’t call her for a week or so. I was too busy moving around and feeling too guilty to speak to anyone, really. Now, she was old enough to hear about my first date and my relationship. She was growing up into a friend, not just a sister.   
Whereas Felicity was just annoyed that someone else was taking up my attention.   
That’s what happened when my phone started buzzing on the arm of the sofa, just before Buddy the Elf decorated his father’s apartment.   
I glanced to see Sonny’s name on my phone screen and she whined when I nudged her off of my legs so I could pick up the phone.   
“I’ll be back in a minute, Fliss.” I promised her before heading down the hall to my bedroom. My mum’s place and my dad’s house were completely different. Looking at them, knowing the two of them as an adult made me wonder why they were ever together in the first place. But they had changed a lot in the last decade or two.   
My mum’s house was a bungalow. When I was growing up there, it was a spacious two bedroom place. Both of our rooms were a decent size, we had a good size bathroom and a large, bright, open plan kitchen living room. There was always weird art on the walls and blankets and cushions everywhere. We had cluttered comfort. But after my mum remarried, she was reluctant to move house, seeing as we were in a perfect location for her relatively calm life. So she and Stephen built an extension; we had the outside room needed to allow for an extra two, fairly substantial rooms to be added on. So then Stephen had an office and Felicity got her bedroom.   
Honestly, having been away from home for almost a decade, I was always surprised when I came home and my room was still relatively untouched. I mean, yes, there were a few of Felicity’s toy’s stored in there and my wardrobe was pretty much overtaken by the rest of the family’s clothes instead of mine, but it was pretty much just as I had left it, right down to the photos on the wall and the shoes under the bed.   
“Hey.” I picked up the phone on my way to my room.   
“Hey, honey.” I heard his croaky voice speak. Instinctively, I glance at my watch to double check the time. It was around six, which meant it was one pm in New York, but it sounded like he had just woken.   
“Are you alright? You sound all morning like.” I commented, closing my bedroom door behind me with my foot.   
“I think I’ve got something coming on. My throat’s been a bit sore.”   
“If you infect me when I get home, I will jump on a plane and come straight back here again.” I warned him. I didn’t have time to get sick. In fact, neither did he.   
I heard him chuckle coarsely and then cough. “Good to know you’re concerned, doc.”   
“You’ll live.” I threw myself on my bed, curled up on my side. “What are you doing today?”   
He told me about his day, about going with Bella and his niece to their parent’s and he told me about his quiet day in the day before, when he ate leftovers and watched TV.   
Although our family life’s and our Christmas’ were different, they were at heart still the same; family orientated and attempts at relaxing.   
“I didn’t tell you the weirdest thing, I totally blanked.” I remembered. “My dad and Tara and Ave are coming to New York in the Spring.”   
There was a slight pause from his end. “What?”   
“Yeah, it was, like, a big part of Tara’s Christmas present. The three of them are coming over the second week in April, because the schools are on their Spring Break.” I expanded.   
The gift had blindsided me as much as it had done Tara. I had always spent Christmas Eve with my dad, and then with Ave and Tara when they came along. It was always the same tradition, ever since my dad got married; we would go into the city to see the Christmas lights and the fair and go to the same restaurant for a Christmas dinner before going back to their place and opening up my presents. Now though, I opened my gift from my dad and Ave and I would give them their gifts and Tara would open one other present from under the tree and I drove back to my mum’s to help her with the presents while Felicity slept.   
I had gotten a hysterical phone call from Tara around eleven on Christmas morning saying that she was going to be going to New York. She was more than excited, I could barely get an word in edgeways as she chattered on about how they could do they tourist things when I was at work and then when I was finished, we could go to the places I went to for dinner and I could show her all the good shops and we could do things together, because by then she’d be sixteen and she’d be almost an adult. I was slightly lost for words.   
“Your dad’s coming here?”   
“Well, I doubt Sonny Carisi’s apartment is gonna be on the to-see list of the tourist attractions, but yeah, they’re coming to the city.” I chewed at my lip, tensing at the thought.   
I didn’t think my family were, realistically, going to meet Sonny, unless we were together for about three more years. Then, maybe, he would come with me to Scotland. But no way did I think any of them were going to come to Manhattan.   
“I thought I wasn’t going to meet him until…like…my fiftieth birthday or something.” His voice had this weird edge to it.   
“Same here. But I guess you’re getting an early fiftieth birthday celebration because they’ll be with us in five months. I don’t know why he didn’t tell me though. Like, I thought he would have mentioned something to me. But nothing, he just said he thought it would be a cool surprise.”   
“Well, it kind of is.” He wavered a little.   
“You sound weird. Are you nervous or something?”   
“You told me my chances of meeting your family were pretty much the same as my chances of flying to the moon.” Sonny replied. “I’m just, like, I dunno. Caught off guard.”   
I smiled at his reaction. “You’ve got time, don’t worry. And it’s actually better it being him than my mother. And honestly, I’ll probably be seeing Tara more than my dad and Ave. And she’s so excited to meet you.”   
“Your sister or your stepmum?”   
“Sister. Although, Ave was actually happier for me than my mother was.” I commented, only a little bit bitter.   
“Where are they staying?”   
“Bryant Park in Midtown.”   
“At least they’re not staying with you.” He said and then backtracked, concerned it sounded harsh. “I mean, I don’t know how happy your dad would be if he knew I was staying with you all the time.”   
I smiled and shook my head. Our upbringings were a little different in that way, in the sense that I was allowed boyfriends in my room from about fifteen and he would probably be made to sleep in a different room from me if we ever stayed at his parents.   
“Anyway, it’ll probably be cool, meeting some of your family.” He reasoned with himself, and partly with me. “I just hope they bring baby pictures ‘cause my ma showed you way too many when you met her.”   
I laughed, just thinking of the photos his mother and sisters had produced at Thanksgiving. I seriously wanted to frame some of them, especially the one of a gangly Sonny in his pyjamas on the morning of his ninth birthday. It seems he had been tall since birth.   
“I don’t think my dad has many photos of me as a kid, my mum has them all.” I thought out loud. “But he’s got some photos from when I was at uni.”   
“Well, I’ve seen your graduation pictures. I want to see the embarrassing ones; the ones with food on your face and the horrible outfits you got dressed in and the naked bath ones.”   
I glanced over at the photos on my noticeboard on the wall. There were those exact pictures over there. “Oh, you can see the naked bath ones anytime.”   
His laugh was loud on the other end of the phone, it warmed my chest right up. “I was talking about when you were a kid, Rai, not the other week.”   
I was about to say something along the same lines when Felicity’s voice came wailing to my ears.   
“Rainaaaaa!”   
“Can you hear that?” I said, hushed, into the speaker of my phone.   
“Someone yelling for you?”  
“That’s Felicity.” I told him just as she did it again.   
“She sounds Scottish.” He almost whispered.   
“She is.” I laughed, as if needing to remind him. “I gotta go. She’s already a bit sensitive about me leaving and I’m going to my dad’s tomorrow so she won’t see me that much.”   
“Okay, well,” Sonny cleared his throat. “If you feel as lonely as you felt the other night, you can send me another picture.”   
I scoffed at him, getting up to go back to Felicity. “I’ll think about it. But I feel like I’m going to feel fine tonight. But maybe you’ll feel differently.”   
“There’s a high, high chance.”  
I bit back a smile, at that point knowing how much I wanted to be back with him. “Okay, detective. I really have to go. Love you.”   
“Love you too. Would love you more if you sent me a picture though.”


	13. Reunite

I pulled the cuffs of my soft sweatshirt around my fingers and suppressed my yawn as I passed the airport worker. I tried to smile but my yawn overtook, making me garble out an odd half tired grimace.   
I was tired. And I was cold. And I was tired. Man, was I tired.   
My connecting flight from London to New York was delayed by three hours. Which didn’t seem long, but it felt like a lifetime.   
And now, I was quietly ecstatic to be rolling my suitcase through the arrivals gate in JFK airport to step into a taxi and snooze my way back to my apartment.   
Sonny was working and although Tilly wanted to pick me up if he wasn’t around, I didn’t want to bother her. Especially not when it was freezing cold and I was an hour away from our neighbourhoods.   
I pulled my phone from my pocket so I had it ready to call for a cab when I got outside, unless I just wanted to pay a ridiculous amount extra and just use the ones that were outside the terminal. I was thinking this over so much that I almost missed him  
Almost.   
He was tall enough to peak against the smattered crowd awaiting arrivals. I started to laugh as soon as I saw him, just a couple of metres away.   
Sonny was grinning, waiting for me to get past the roped off area, standing with his hands shoved in his pockets. He looked so happy, his smile reached up to his eyes, dimples dented into his cheek.   
“What are you doing here?” I half chuckled as I got to a few steps from him.   
“I thought I’d surprise you.” He shrugged, still beaming at me as he outstretched his arms. I stepped into his reach and fell against his body, relieved and happy to see him. I looped my arms around his neck as he crushed me against him and tipped his head down to kiss me.   
“Mm.” I mumbled against his kiss, letting him pull me up onto my tiptoes. “I missed you.”   
“I missed you too.” he pulled his lips back just a little before pecking me again. “We’re gonna have to find a way to bring Scotland and US closer together so we don’t need to do this again.”   
“So we don’t need to kiss again?” I teased, brushing my nose against his as he laughed softly.   
“Reunite. I am all for the kissing, sweetheart.” He peppered me with quick, soft, innocent kisses before I began to laugh and turned my head away from him. “Come on, let’s go.” He let go of my waist and let me step back while he grabbed the handle of my suitcase.   
As soon as I saw him, I felt it. I was home. Not almost home. Already home.   
He laced his hand in mine and let me wind my other arm around him too. I leant myself against his body, happy in the comfort of him as we walked through the airport.   
“Where you at work at all today?” I looked up at him as we wandered. “Or did you just lie outright?”   
“I was this morning for a few hours. Figured I’d do a bit of paperwork.” He said.   
I almost scowled. He rarely just did nothing. I don’t actually know if he was physically able to do it. He had a quicker mind than most, he wasn’t able to just do nothing for more than a day. The novelty of it wore off quickly for him. He was working right up until Christmas Eve but was supposed to be off until the third of January, which was normal for any other human being but a lifetime for him.   
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to last until you went back to work officially.” I shook my head. “How’s the studying been going?”   
“Alright. Working with Barba at Thanksgiving was a blessing, I think.” He stroked his thumb over my hand as we wound our way through the droves of people. “But I’m just keeping going. I don’t actually know what I’m gonna do once I sit the Bar. No more studying. I’m gonna have so much free time.”   
“And then you’ll probably go for another degree, right?” I laughed. I had teased him about it before, the fact that he wasn’t happy with just one profession, he needed something more. I wouldn’t have put it past him to suddenly decide to go to medical school.   
He rolled his eyes at me. “Nah, I think I’ll stick with just the two career choices.”   
“No doubt you’ll pick something else up. Or you’ll be like a superhero and fight crime at night in the streets and during the day you’ll be in the courtrooms.” I theorised.   
He had actually always sidestepped my enquiries about his future career path. I mean, what was the point of getting his law degree and passing the bar if he wasn’t going to pursue it. But I don’t know if he was up to leaving SVU.   
“But then when would I have time to woo you?” he brought my hand to his mouth and kissed my fingers.   
“Oh please, I’m wooed,” I scoffed. I was his, I didn’t need any more convincing. “But I do prefer it when you’re not out on the street at night.”   
“You make it sound like I’m homeless.” He rolled his eyes at me and braced himself as we stepped out into the cold.   
I was about to make a smart remark but it was knocked out of me by the wind that whipped around my body. “Jesus.” I winced, pulling my jacket closed with one hand. I balanced my handbag on my shoulder and kept myself close to Sonny. His hands were cold but the rest of him was warm, like always.   
“We’re over here.” He jutted his chin in the direction of the car park which was somewhat shaded from the wind.   
The cold in New York was always different to that in Scotland. In Scotland, it was damp, rainy and windy and chilled you right to the bone. But, usually, in New York the cold was much crisper.   
I felt like my cheeks were getting cut from the snap of the wind against my skin as we huddled towards the car. He had parked under a little bit of cover, so although it was so cold, the wind was less biting. It let us slow a little more, instead of running to get out of the wind.   
“You wanna drive?” Sonny asked me as he heaved my case into the trunk of my car.   
I shook my head and went round the passenger side. “I think I might fall asleep at the wheel.”  
“I’ll drive then.” He chuckled, watching me as I craned my neck up to look at the sky. You couldn’t really see the stars, only the really bright ones. “What you looking at?” Sonny asked me, coming to stand in front of me.   
I leant my back against the car and kept looking up. “The sky always looks different here than right in the city. It’s all the light.”   
“We should go up to Inwood Hill Park one night.” He skimmed his hands down my arms, watching me as I watched the sky. “It’s supposed to be real nice up there.”  
I nodded. “I go to the High Line sometimes.” My voice was quiet, like whispering against the coldness of the dark.   
“I’ll come with you next time.” I felt his lips press against the side of my jaw. “Doing it under the stars sounds good.”   
I coughed a laugh and straightened my neck to look at him. He had this soft smile on his face that made me want to pull him close and stay with him forever.   
“Mmm, I can’t believe how much I missed you.” I took his face in my hands. His cheeks were flushed from the cold and his nose was practically frozen, but his eyes were warm, always.   
“I can.” He leant down, pressing himself against me and kissed my lips. “I don’t want you to leave again.”   
My lips tilted up a little at his statement. “I’ve got another year before I go back.”   
“It’s too soon.” He disagreed, kissing me again but shaking his head at the same time. “Give it five years.”   
“Why five? Will you have broken up with me by then?” My hands were freezing now as I pulled back a little between kisses.   
“Not likely.”   
I grinned and kissed him one more time before ducking from his grip and climbing into the car. It wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t as cold as it was outside. I saw him shake his head at me through the window before going round the other side.   
I rubbed my hands together to get heat into them as Sonny started the engine. “Did you see your flowers?”   
I frowned, not knowing what he was talking about when he reached round to the back seat and produced a bouquet of wildflowers. A smile broke out and I pressed the flowers to my face, smelling them. White carnations, baby breath and dark, wintery greenery. “Thank you, honey.” I smiled into the bouquet.  
“I know you like the little white ones.” He leant over and kissed me on the cheek softly. I brushed the petals of the carnations with the tip of my finger, feeling how silky smooth they were against my hand. I reached around the back of his seat and lay them carefully on the backseat. He brought me flowers every so often. Never for an occasion, just for fun, because he saw them, because he thought of me, because he wanted to. They always had baby’s breath as a filler- gypsophila. I loved it. I thought it always looked so rustic, so natural.   
“You always get really good flowers.” I commented, turning back around in my seat before getting out my phone to text my family to let them know I had landed in the States again.   
It took a few minutes for the car heater to kick in and by that time, we were on the road home.   
“Are we going to mine or yours?” I slouched in my seat, warming up a little.   
“Yours. I already went round today. Guppy’s there and I turned on your heating and stuff.” He said as he changed lanes. The roads were quiet, not passing many other cars.   
I smiled when he said that, but didn’t say anything. He was just caring like that, he wanted to make my life easier, better. Always.   
We listened to the radio, which was in that weird stage where they were unsure whether to play Christmas songs or not, and drove back to mine. I rolled my shoulders, feeling the tension in them from travelling all day. I had slept on the plane from London, but not enough to feel fully relaxed. I could feel the muscles on either side of my spine pulling. I was definitely going to be using that massage voucher I got from Sonny’s family for Christmas.   
“You alright?” Sonny glanced across to me.   
I nodded, stretching my arms out. “Just a bit sore. Nothing a night in my own bed shouldn’t fix.”   
“I can put my magic hands to use when we get back.”   
I laughed at him and stretched my arm across to him. I draped my hand over his shoulder and leant to kiss his cheek, getting a smile from him when I did. “Mwah.” I kissed him again. “My bed at my mum’s felt really small. There was no way we both would have been able to fit.”   
“We’d make it work.” When he smiled, my nose brushed against his cheek. I was still leaning over to him. I slipped my hand down, feeling the firmness of his chest against my palm. He knew exactly what I was doing as I pushed my hand down further, to his stomach, his thigh, his crotch.   
As that, he yanked his hand from the steering wheel and grabbed my wrist. “Don’t do this to me right now…” He half pleaded half warned. “It’s been a long week.”   
I laughed at him, hazy in my tiredness but happy. Maybe giddy from fatigue, actually. With one last kiss of his cheek, I settled myself back in my seat.   
I pulled my leg up under me and snuggled against my jacket, getting sleepier with the warmth in the car. Sonny’s hand covered mine, like it did normally when we drove.   
“Thank you for looking after Guppy and picking me up and everything.”   
“It’s nothing, honey.”   
I brought his hand to my lips and pressed my cheek against the smooth skin on the back of his hand. Sonny was always the one who said he loved me. He was so confident in his feeling for me, he never wavered, never doubted. He was always honest.   
I worried, at times, that I didn’t tell him as much as he told me, that maybe he didn’t feel as appreciated by me as I did by him. It wasn’t that I didn’t like to communicate how I felt to him, it was more that I just forgot that I had to let him know.   
Although I had been so keen to define our relationship those months before, it was more out of fear that we weren’t on the same page and I didn’t know what was expected of me more than my need to let him know how I felt.  
But I did love him. So I had to make sure I said it.  
I kissed his knuckles again. “I love you so much.”


	14. Phonecall

SET AFER NATIONWIDE MANHUNT  
“…And I swear to God, if I have to deal with one more hippy-dippy mom, I am not gonna be able to control myself.” Tilly threw back the last mouthful of her wine before reaching for the bottle on the table to fill it back up.   
“Tilly, you’re as hippy-dippy as the parents. You’ll be the exact same- no GMO’s, no pollution, no TV, no vaccinations.” Piper rolled her eyes and pulled her legs underneath herself on the sofa.   
“Eh, she can do the other stuff but there will be vaccinations whether you guys like it or not,” I interjected at that point with raised eyebrows.   
It was Saturday night, mid-February, and it was actually the first time since I had gotten home from Scotland that we had all met up, sans partners and children. We were at my place; away from kids’ messes and husbands’ moans and roommates’ interruptions. My place was a kind of safe haven in that way. It had been like that since I had moved in.   
We ordered in way too much food; Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese, which we had made a fair dent in, but there was a considerable amount of leftovers. And Sita, in her poster-mom manner, brought home-baked cupcakes to go with chips and dip I had already got and the copious amounts of wine that was already being consumed.   
We were moaning about our work and laughing about our lives and venting about our relationships; just like a usual night in.   
“Seriously, another teacher told me about this mom who refused to breastfeed her youngest because they were vegans. Like, how does that even work? I don’t get it. I don’t understand.” Tilly whined, face-planting the cushion that sat next to her on the floor.   
I chuckled at her. She loved teaching, I knew she did. It took her a while to find her place in the world, in the workplace, but at that school, she found it. But, no matter how much you enjoyed your job, there was always something that sucked about it.   
Sita was mid-sentence when a phone started buzzing. All of us had fairly identical phones, just with different cases. Mine was a simple, sleek black one. Sita and Piper both had their kids’ pictures on the back of them- like proper moms. And Tilly’s was multi-coloured with a picture of Steve Buscemi emblazoned on it. I think that said a lot about her.   
It was my phone that was ringing. It was Sonny’s picture and name that was coming up on the screen.   
I tensed a little, like I always did when he called when he was working. Especially because it was almost midnight. There was always a fear that it wasn’t him that was calling me, that something had happened.   
The girl’s moaned when I reached for my phone and answered. “Hello?” I ignored them and stood up.   
“Hey, baby,” Sonny said. I exhaled in relief that it was him and not a paramedic or someone he worked with telling me he had gotten shot or something.   
It had been an intense start to the year. For one, Olivia had been held hostage in January, just as they had gone back to work. And then, he had this case that involved witnesses that didn’t really do much while a woman got raped in the courtyard of their apartment building.  
That had affected him quite a bit. He had come home to mine, late one night during his case. I had been lying in bed, reading up on things for a research project I was working on when he stumbled into my room, exhausted. He had lay down on top of me, sliding himself between my legs, still fully dressed though looking fairly dishevelled. I listened to him tell me about it, his head on my stomach, looking up at me. He was disgusted with the lack of action the witnesses took and he was terrified because it could have easily have been me or one of his sisters. I had to reassure him for a while, force him to shower and come to bed. It was the first time I had seen him, that he had let me see him, being totally and completely effected by his job.   
I slipped into my office, letting my friends carry on talking and watching the TV. “You okay?” I asked him, leaning down to switch on the lamp.   
“Uh, yeah. How’s your night going?” he asked, like it was normal to call me so late. Well, for him, it was pretty normal.   
“It’s fine, we’re just chilling. Ate a lot of food but there’s so many leftovers if you want them. Like, we have a lot of cuisines going on in this apartment right now.” I pulled out my office chair and perched on the edge of it.   
“Ah, good.” There was an extended pause there. I made a face into the phone. Normally, he was chatty. He told me every detail of his day. But he was saying nothing.   
I raised my eyebrows. “So…are you sure everything is okay? You’re not that chatty.”   
“I’m…uh, tired. But I’m calling on police stuff just now.” He cleared his throat.   
“O…kay.” I tensed a little, mouth open in anticipation. Or maybe more dread. Why would he need me?   
Again, there was a silence. I didn’t say anything, just waited for him to speak. It took a second. “I need to ask about someone. Um, you have a patient, Mariah Weaver.”   
I jilted my head backwards in surprise at the name. And the fact that he was saying it.   
Mariah was a patient, yeah. I had worked with her, literally, since the day I started full time at Bellevue. I saw her twice a week for a year, and she had made good progress so it went down to once a week.   
But the fact the Sonny, a detective for Special Victims was asking about her, made me feel a little nauseous.   
“She’s a witness type victim thing on a case we’re dealing with. I, uh. We saw your name on her prescription and I need-”  
“Sonny, I’m gonna stop you there.” I didn’t want to know. I would never have broken patient confidentiality. Ever. Not for family, the police, not even for Sonny. “I can’t talk about patients with you. You know that.”   
“I know but she’s not a suspect, she’s a victim. She could be in trouble. Her sister is a victim and she’s accusing their father but we need Mariah to-” Sonny spoke quickly in an attempt to avoid me protesting but I still interrupted.   
“Sonny!” I almost hissed, my voice jumping three or so octaves in pitch. “You know I’m not gonna tell you anything. You know I can’t do it. I won’t do it. Don’t ask me to. I don’t give a shit how much I love you, I’m not breaking confidentiality.”  
“But she’s-”  
“But nothing.” I cut him off again, starting to get angry. I wasn’t even going to entertain the notion of this anymore. I wasn’t gonna do it. “I need to go, my friends are still here.”  
“Rai, I didn’t wanna piss you off but I needed to ask about her-”  
“Sonny, stop. I have to go.” I hung up my mobile without letting him try to explain, without giving him a minute to talk further. I didn’t want to hear it.   
I never asked him details about his work and he didn’t ask me for details either. We hadn’t ever broached that confidentiality issues. Never.  
Until now.   
With a few deep breaths to rid myself of the negativity buzzing through me, I went back through to the living room and pulled the cuffs of my sweatshirt- Sonny’s NYPD one- around my hands and slumped on the sofa next to Piper.   
“What did the esteemed detective want?” Sita questioned from the armchair. Tilly was leaning against the chair Sita was on. They all looked at me, awaiting an answer.   
“Um.” I raised my eyebrows. “He wanted to know about a patient. Apparently, she’s involved in his case or something and he wants information. But obviously, I can’t tell him anything. I won’t tell him anything.”   
The three of them exchanged looks, putting down their glasses. I curled the blanket around me, searching for comfort in the weirdness of the situation.   
“That’s…weird,” Piper commented. “Does he normally ask you about work?”   
She was the most protective of me, I think. Although Sita and Tilly were just as fierce when it came to our friendship, there was just an extra edge to Piper. An extra grown woman aspect of her. Maybe it was because she was the oldest, by just a few months of Sita, or because she had a child first. But it was in her nature. She was the one who picked up our pieces when we got out hearts broken. She had been with Shawn for years, they had started dating a year or so after we had met and they had a relatively smooth run. So looking out for us, and most importantly our hearts, came easy to her, I think.   
So when she asked me if Sonny usually asked about my work, I knew that she was really asking whether this was going to be a repeat of the tabloid reporter guy. It wasn’t. But I knew where she was coming from; the thought had dashed through my head initially.   
“We talk vaguely. But we don’t go for specifics. Neither of us do. We both have a confidentiality aspect of work, we can’t disclose certain things.” I twisted my finger around the thread of the blanket, fidgeting to avoid thinking too much.   
Sita took a breath before speaking, as if trying to delicately put her words together. “What was it he was asking? I mean, if you can tell us.”   
“I don’t really know, I didn’t let him ask. I didn’t want to hear it, he knows I can’t talk about anything. I can’t give an address, I can’t comment on her treatment, I can’t talk about her past. He sounded weird as soon as I picked up.” I admitted, frowning. “But he’s been a bit tense these last few days because of the whole escaped prisoner thing last week.”   
“I knew that Sonny was in that department. The one that was dealing with it.” Tilly almost laughed at my offhand comment. “What actually happened?”   
I groaned. “God, the guy, he was an M.E for the city or something. Remember it was all over the papers in the fall?” I continued on when they nodded in recognition. “Well, there was this other guy, serial killer, who’s also a Doctor and helped get the M.E imprisoned. But they ended up in the same prison block and they escaped through a hole into the pipes or something.”   
It was a few days of pure panic for the police.   
“Oh my god.” Sita glugged her wine, still listening.   
“Yeah.” I threw an M&M in my mouth. “Sonny was going up to the prison to interview him or something, and he was supposed to meet me at work to go for dinner and then he calls me and tells me that the guy has escaped. And because Sonny is Sonny, turns out he has the weird little half friendship going on with the guy-”  
“The M.E or the other serial killer?” Tilly asked for clarification.   
“The M.E. So because of their little friend thing, he had been talking to him and the M.E somehow figured out that Sonny was now seeing someone.” I downloaded them, remembering how confused I was at that. “And the guy tells Sonny to stay away from bacon because it’s really bad for you and he wouldn’t want Sonny to die on me.”  
I agreed with all their half horrified half confusedly intrigued expressions as I went on. “So Sonny called me and said that he wanted me to not go to his place, like we planned, just in case the M.E knew where he lived and made me get a cab home instead of the bus or whatever.” I shook my head thinking back to the weird confusion of the week. It was an odd situation, to say the least.   
“Not a dull moment in this household.” Tilly reached for a cupcake and began to swirl the icing off of it.   
“So I thought he just sounded weird because of that, but now this. And I don’t really know how I ended that then.” I frowned, confused at what just happened but angry at the same time. “Urgh. I’ll talk to him later. Let’s talk about something else.”  
I didn’t want to ruminate on anything because I knew I would make the issue bigger than it actually was. It was classic me. So, for the rest of the night, I curled up in my space on the sofa and let the conversation flow, away from the topic of my relationship.


	15. Remember

My conversations with Sonny into the start of the next week were fleeting and uncharacteristically brief. It wasn’t that we weren’t talking, it was just we kept missing each other. We were both working, as usual, but we hadn’t had the opportunity to arrange when we would actually see each other.   
Which is why I was walking up the stairs to Sonny’s flat, wearing only a jacket, underwear and heels with a box of desserts and a bag of his favourite coffee on a Wednesday night.   
Instead of using my key, I knocked on his door and waited for him to answer. A split second panic waved over me in the thought that he wasn’t in and I had driven all the way to Brooklyn for nothing. But then I heard movement from his apartment and the door opened. He looked confused and surprised to see me, his hand still holding the door half shut. He looked tired, although he usually did towards the end of the day. I think the sweatpants and baggy maroon t-shirt added to the sleepiness of his image. Honestly, he looked cute.  
I grinned at him, tilting my head before he responded to me. “Raina, hi.” He look surprised to see me and made no move to ask me in so I just stepped inside without invitation. “I thought you were on call. Did we have plans tonight?”   
“I am.” I reached up on my tiptoes to kiss his still slightly confused mouth softly. “It’s just a flying visit.” I walked into his kitchen, hearing him close the door behind me.   
“Did you come straight from work?” he asked. I shook my head in reply, knowing he was referring to my slightly fancy mac I was wearing, paired with almost unbearably high heels.   
His books and papers and laptop and pens were splayed out on his table. He had the Bar a week on Saturday.   
“Uh, not to be annoying but I don’t really have time to go out or anything.” Sonny stretched his arm, to touch the back of his neck.   
“I know.” I set my things on the worktop. “And I know you’re stressing about the Bar so I brought you cookies from Jazz’s, and coffee beans from Mama Lione’s to see you through the week because we weren’t going to get to see each other.”   
He still looked a little weird. His smile didn’t create the dimples, didn’t reach up to his crystal eyes. But I pushed through the weirdness.   
“And…” I undid the button of my jacket to flash the underwear set I was wearing. His eyes widened as he took in the red lace and garters. It was entirely impractical but I had worn it before and he had loved it.   
I didn’t want weirdness. I didn’t want tension. I wanted normality. I wanted our normality.   
“I mean, I figured I should break up your studying some way, right?” I stepped towards him, happier now that I could feel his smile, or rather his smirk. “And I know I can’t stay the night, but I don’t think this will take us too long.”   
Sonny skimmed his hands along my bare waist, tugging off my jacket to let it fall to the floor. “I don’t think this will take us long at all.”   
The weirdness fell away for that time; when we stumbled into his bedroom, when he scooped me up and threw me onto the bed, even when we lay for ten minutes, snoozing just a bit before we came to grips with the reality that I had to go.   
But it was like a spell had been broken, the second we stepped out of his bedroom, the oddness came back.   
I hadn’t seen Sonny like that before, so tense and quiet.   
I watched him as I pulled on my jacket and fastened my heels back on.   
He had already apologised for asking about Mariah, and I had also said I was sorry for shutting him down so quickly. But it didn’t feel finished. He had tried to reason out his apology, but when I was fairly silent on the other end of the phone, he cleared the reason away and just said sorry. I told him I didn’t want to talk about it again. He had just said ‘mm-hmm’.   
That didn’t say ‘finished’ to me.   
“You not cold without any clothes on? It’s February in New York, Rai.” Sonny’s arms were folded over his chest as he leant against the wall, his zipper hoodie unfastened, showing his soft skin of his chest and torso.   
I cut off a tiny bit of one of the cookies I had brought him and popped it in my mouth. “I have a sweater in the car. I didn’t take the subway in my underwear, babe.”   
He just nodded.   
Right there, I decided that if he was still acting weird after the Bar, I would snap. I couldn’t start something whilst the biggest exam of his life loomed in front of him. But, god, I didn’t know if I could last two weeks with the weirdness.   
I went for the door and he followed me. “We’re okay, right?” I asked, not looking at him, instead pulling the door open.   
He cleared his throat behind me. “Yeah.”   
“Okay.” I swallowed, not knowing whether it was entirely true. “Well, happy studying. Call me, okay? Whenever you have a minute. Even just leave a message or something.” I turned to face him, now I was outside the doorway.   
Sonny nodded and leant down to kiss me. “Night.”   
It was a brief kiss, in where I was expecting more but waiting for something more made me feel too vulnerable.   
I turned and headed for the stairs.   
“Rai.”   
I stopped and turned when he said my name.   
Sonny was watching me, intensely, with his hand on the doorframe. I had a weird flashback sensation to when I had first gone to his flat, when he welcomed me at the door as I came up the stairs.   
“Remember, I love you.” He said, purposefully.


	16. Mariah

His ‘remember, I love you’ comment didn’t make much sense to me for a while. I accepted it with a smile and a nod before heading down the stairs, confused as to why he formed his sentence like that.   
It wasn’t until Friday afternoon that I realised why he said it.   
“Raina?”  
My office door was ajar, with Jessa, one of the clerks that worked across the departments in the doorway.   
“Mm?” I glanced up from my emails. She was about my age, slightly on edge but good at her job. But she was looking especially nervous in front of me, rotating a large brown envelope in her hand. “You okay?” I sat back, taking my hands away from the keyboard.   
“Um. This came for you when you were at lunch.” She stepped onto the carpeted floor and advanced towards my desk, hand outstretched with the envelope.   
“Okay, thanks.” I reached for it. I had to change my lunch around, because of an overnight admission that mean things were changing around, pushing my appointments back and forth. It was almost three and I had only been back from my lunch break for twenty minutes.   
She hesitated. “Um, it was a court guy. He said I had to make sure you were aware that it was urgent and you had to respond to it.”   
I frowned, pulling at the seal. “A court guy? Like a lawyer?”   
“No, he wasn’t a lawyer, he was just like a clerk or something.” She watched as I pulled out the papers. There were about ten sheets of documents, all full of printed text. Already, I knew it wasn’t a good thing.   
‘For the attention of Dr Raina Callum…you are hereby commanded to cease all business…appear before the court…and that you bring with you any and all documents relating to the treatment and relationship with one, Mariah Victoria Weaver…’   
As soon as I realised what it was, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. It felt like someone was putting their hand through my navel and into my stomach, grabbing and twisting my insides, crumpling them like a piece of paper.   
Sonny.  
“Son…of a bitch.” I groaned, flipping through the papers. The rest of the documents had detailed law jargon that I didn’t understand.   
“Is everything okay?” Jessa asked, peering at me, unsure of what I was feeling.   
“I’ve been subpoenaed.” I chucked the document on the desk.  
“For a patient?”   
I nodded, the wheels in my head already turning frantically as I tried to get out of the situation. “I gotta make some calls.”  
“Let me know if you need anything.” She bowed out, knowing I was gonna flip out in a minute. As soon as she closed the door behind her, I shuffled the papers and read them again, knowing that when I had realised what it was the first read through, panic had taken over and I hadn’t received all the information into my head.   
I forced myself to read it slowly, to see if I could figure out what it was saying.   
It took me ten minutes to read it over again and to notice the name on the attorney.   
Rafael Barba.   
“Motherfucker.” I slammed my hands onto my desk, wincing at the pain that shot through the heel of my hand.   
It took me a few minutes to get into action and search for Mariah’s number on the database. My hand clenched and unclenched in rhythm with the pounding in my chest and head whilst I waited for her to pick up.   
Mariah was fragile. Even now, being down to just weekly appointments, she was still fragile.   
She was admitted to the hospital after a suicide attempt that landed her in our emergency room. I didn’t admit her, but I was one of the first to work with her, and we seemed to click so I kept working with her.   
She was abused by her father. And she never told anyone, so she left as soon as she could. And, like a lot of victims, not all, it sent her down the wrong path. Drugs, drinking, horrible situations. At twenty five years old, she was terrified, she was depressed, she was paranoid and on edge, always. And eventually, she couldn’t take it.  
The abuse she went through was horrendous. It was life altering. As part of treatment, we discussed, at length, the option of going to the police. We even brought in an advocate at one point but she would get so far and then take seven steps back and we’d have to work through it all over again. So we put that on hold for a while, not forever, but for a while.   
I sought advice from the other doctors and they agreed with me, to just leave that for the moment. She had no younger siblings, there wasn’t a child at risk from her father. She had a big sister, who she thought had gone through the same thing but had left before Mariah did.   
I knew that this phone call was not going to work out well.   
And my thoughts were confirmed as soon as I told her about the subpoena. She became hysterical.   
The police had been in contact with her, something she had failed to mention over the last three sessions we had. Her sister had come back to New York, got into it with their family and their father raped her. Again. So this time she was able to press charges and, it’s a small world, because it was Sonny and his team that were dealing with it.  
Now, Mariah’s family weren’t poor, they weren’t in the Projects, they were fairly rich. Which was how the case was getting stopped at every point.   
So, apparently, they needed to corroborate Mariah’s sister’s story. With Mariah.   
Mariah was screeching, sobbing, begging for me not to comply with the subpoena. And I knew she wouldn’t be able to deal with it. I knew it.   
“I’m gonna deal with this, okay?” I ran my hand over my face, staring at the wall. “I’m gonna deal with it.”   
And I did deal with it. Or at least I tried to.   
The journey to the precinct took about twenty minutes, thanks to relatively quiet traffic. It was just enough time to stew over what was happening.   
I was gonna kill him.   
Goddam it, Sonny knew. He knew that I was gonna get that subpoena. That’s why he was acting so weird. That’s we he said the ‘remember’ part. So I would remember that he cared about me, that he wasn’t trying to hurt me. But it felt like he was.   
It felt like betrayal. It felt like hurt, again.   
But hurt wasn’t what was driving me to storm through the police department, into the elevator. It was anger.   
With my bag in one hand and the envelope in the other, I stalked through the corridor. Through the glass doors, I caught sight of Sonny. At least he was in, it would have been less satisfying if he wasn’t even there.   
My hand shoved the door open and I forced myself through the swinging doors into the office. My heels were loud against the hard floor, loud enough to represent my anger. It was radiating through me and I wanted to be loud. I wanted to make a scene. I wanted to…punish him.   
Sonny didn’t even look up from his desk as I came up behind him. I had tunnel vision focussed on him. I didn’t notice Amanda catch sight of me from the coffee machine and start to smile.   
I slammed the file down on his desk. Startled, he stared up at me in confusion. “What the hell is this?” My jaw clenched tightly in an attempt to stop myself swearing at him.   
“Rai?” he stared at me, and then to the file and then back. “Wh-What is this? What are you doing here?”   
“What am I doing here?” I hissed. “I just got served, Sonny!”  
I dug my nails into the palm of my hands. I could feel myself shaking.   
I was humiliated. That was what the feeling was. Humiliation.   
I was out of the loop with Sonny, he had chosen to shut me out.   
“Oh.” The colour drained from his face, it was like I could see it literally fading until he just looked grey with guilt. It was like he was finally caught. “Baby, I need to ta-”  
“Do not say talk. And do not call me baby right now.” I glared at him, grabbing the envelope back off the desk. “Fix this. Deal with this.”  
“I can’t fix it!” he stood up, his eyes darting around the room. He took my arm but I shrugged out of it.   
“Get the hell off of me. I wanna talk to Barba. Now. I’m not kidding.” I could hear my voice getting louder and louder. And I didn’t want to make a scene at his work, I didn’t. But I couldn’t not say something. I couldn’t not stay quiet.   
He made a desperate face and reached for my hand again. “I d-”  
“Oh, hey Raina.” Fin welcomed me as he came into the offices. When I gave him a tight lipped smile, barely diverting my glare from Sonny, he seemed to revaluate the situation. “Uh. Is everything okay here?”   
Sonny glowered at his colleague. “She got the subpoena.”  
“You. All. Knew.” I gritted my teeth.   
Rage shot up from my toes, setting fire to my chest, lighting up my brain.   
“Uh, why don’t we get Liv?” Fin darted towards Olivia’s office, rapping on the door, despite Sonny yelling for him to leave it for now.   
“What the hell? You couldn’t have given me a heads up?!” The hurt tumbled from my voice as I smacked Sonny’s arm with the back of my hand. “Your whole frigging precinct knows that I’m about to be subpoenaed and you don’t think to tell me?!”  
He glanced towards his lieutenant’s office before stepping closer to me, his hand clutching the lapel of my jacket. “Rai, I wanted to-”  
“Stop it.” I snapped. “I told you I would not talk about my patients. I told you that explicitly, I-”  
“Raina?” Olivia’s calm, collected voice reached me. She was holding her door open, waiting for me. “Come on in, we can have a chat.”  
I didn’t want a chat.  
I pushed Sonny’s hand off of me, feeling him follow me closely. “I want to talk to Olivia.” I shrugged him off of me again.   
“Rai, I need to explain-”  
“Dominick!” I froze in my step and turned to face him with a glare. “Stop it.”   
Stunned hurt flew over his face, looking like a puppy. Usually, I never made him use that expression, it was cases that made him look so hurt. I was the one who comforted him, cleared that look off of his face with a kiss and tight hug.   
But I didn’t care. I slammed the door closed behind me.   
-  
Sonny  
He knew he was in deep shit. The look on her face was like something he had never seen before. He had seen her annoyed before, when they argued over petty things. He had seen her upset before, when she was dealing with family stuff. He had seen her tired before, when she had come home from tough shift on call. But he had never seen her looking this angry, this hurt.   
And it hurt him to know he had made her feel this way. Or at least, he had played a substantial part in it.   
But they had to have access to Mariah’s records to prove that Jolie, her sister, wasn’t the only victim of their father’s abuse.   
It was right. It was justice.   
Sonny stared at the closed door, seeing the blinds of the glass shake with the force of the slam she had performed. It wasn’t a familiar feeling; being on the receiving end of Raina’s slammed door.   
That wasn’t what they did.   
With a hand through his hair, Sonny set his brow in a harsh, concerned line before retreating to Fin’s desk, where Rollins had joined to stare at the closed off office of their lieutenant.   
“Dominick?” Fin repeated. “I thought she called you ‘Sonny’?”   
Sonny folded his arms, sighed, and perched on the edge of the desk to face the office. “She does. Unless we’re in bed or arguing.”  
With a snort, Rollins raised her eyebrows. “I wonder which situation it is right now.”   
-  
I had calmed down a bit.  
It was Olivia. She had that soothing affect, I was sure.   
She had got me sitting down and called Barba, who, handily, was in the building somewhere anyway.   
“It wasn’t his idea.” She assured me. I had opted to sit in hurt silence mostly, chewing my lip and staring around the office at the pictures, the awards, the certificates, the toys for the kids in the corner.   
I glanced up at her, nudging my glasses up a little.   
“We were going through Mariah’s files and we saw your name on her prescription form-”  
“How did you even get that?” I threw my hands out. “It’s a complete violation of her privacy.”   
“It’s normal with investigations. We have to vet our witnesses.” Olivia softly defenced herself, knowing that, at heart, it was debatably moral.   
“She’s not even your witness though.” I shook my head. They were digging into my patient’s life. My patient who was incredibly fragile- on a good day.   
She went to say something more when the door opened. Barba swept in, coat over his arm and clutching a briefcase. He looked stern, like I imagined he usually looked like, as he dumped his belongings on the chair.   
“You’re contesting the subpoena?” he stared at me, as if I was a kid.   
“No.” I corrected. “I’m refusing the subpoena. I’m not doing it.” I set aside my bag and thrust the file in his direction.   
“I wrote it, I know what’s in it.” He dismissed me with a wave of a hand, casually infuriating me.  
Without invitation, he perched on the edge of Olivia’s desk. The Lieutenant had her hands shoved in her pockets, watching the two of us with a frown.   
“I don’t care what you know. What I’m telling you now is that I’m not doing it, my patient will not give consent or comply and you should drop her involvement in your case.” I stood up, dropping the file onto Olivia’s desk before moving a step back with folded arms.   
I could feel Barba study me, entirely differently than how he had drunkenly appraised me before Christmas.   
Our stare lasted a few seconds before he sighed. “Look, we need you and we need your files to show past abuse of Mariah. That sets up her father, that will cement his guilt in her sister’s rape and her past abuse and that will put him away.” Barba’s voice became more forceful, louder, as his sentence continued.   
I could feel myself going round in circles. Because I knew they didn’t understand.   
“I’m not an idiot. I know why you want me to do this but I won’t.”  
“Why not?” he pressed, half groaning in annoyance.   
I took a breath, dragging my fingers through my hair. “Because Mariah is not stable enough to deal with this, okay? I have tried – hard- to get her to come to the police, to press charges, to come forward but she was not and is not ready.” I tried to explain to them without giving them details, without breaching confidentiality. “We get so far and then she shuts down. Five months ago, we worked solely on this for two weeks, we brought in rape and abuse advocates, we worked on it in group, we ran through situations, we wrote mock letters. She even called her mother- something she hadn’t done in years. And then she has a nightmare, triggered by seeing someone who vaguely resembled her father driving a car that looked somewhat like the car they had when she was a kid and she shuts down. She stopped speaking and eating for three days. She came back into inpatient for a week after hacking into her leg with a compass.” I could see the state of her leg in my head. She needed stitches and time. So we gave her both. “We made a decision, as a team, to leave the issue for now. And since then she’s been doing well. She’s socialising, she’s doing well in her job, she’s sober, attending treatment and taking her medication-”  
“But she’s living in denial.” Olivia spoke softly. I knew she didn’t mean to criticise me, she was just speaking her mind. “Victims have to confront what happened to them if they can ever hope to deal with it.”   
“I know. And ninety percent of the time, that’s what we try to do. But…we have a saying that if you push someone into the light, you’ll blind them.” I said. “As long as they’re not a danger, we can’t force our patients to do anything- they have to choose for themselves. If we make them do something in treatment, it’s damaging in the long run.”  
“Well as poetic as that sounds, you still have to testify.” Barba insisted. Olivia’s shoulders dropped, seeing we weren’t getting anywhere.  
I bit my lip hard before speaking. “I have a duty-”  
At that, he erupted, cutting me off in an explosion of speech. “You knew that Mariah’s father was a rapist, a molester, a paedophile. And you did nothing!”  
“Are you trying to shock me by using those words?” I scoffed. I knew that the people they usually spoke with were members of the public, people they were willing to testify for the greater good. “I am a psychiatrist. I have heard all that. I have heard every detail of abuse. Of child abuse, of domestic abuse, of self-hatred and repulsion. You cannot shock me or scare me into violating confidentiality!” I felt myself tremoring inside, as the rage and annoyance at the situation began to resurface.  
“All right, lets calm down a little.” Olivia raised her hands a little in an attempt to smooth it over but Barba wasn’t taking it.   
“How can you let a man like this get away with all this?” Barba’s voice dropped, he glared at me with poisonous eyes. “You have let him-”  
“I have done nothing wrong.” I insisted. Because I knew that that was true. “To my knowledge, to Mariah’s knowledge, and to my colleague’s knowledge, no other children were at risk since Mariah had left. And that’s right. What has happened to Jolie is horrific. But it was not Mariah’s fault and it was not my fault.”   
The hair in the back of my neck was rising, giving me goose bumps all over my body.   
Daily, I had doubts. Daily, I had fears. About my work and wrong advice and wrong treatment and mistakes and the possibility of me pushing too hard or not pushing hard enough. But I had to draw the line. I had to deal with what was in front of me. And I had to protect my patients.   
Olivia bit her lip in hesitation, hearing my words. “We know that. But we need Mariah’s help.”   
“You have to comply with this. It’s court ordered- you have no choice.” Barba threw up his arms in frustration. “It’s part of your job to-”  
I snapped at him. “It is not my job to make your job easier!”   
The volume of my voice, the harshness of it almost surprised me. They both recoiled a little, shocked by my tone.   
“It is my job only to protect and help my patients.” I had gone too far, I knew it. I didn’t want to sever a connection with my boyfriend’s colleagues, or my boyfriend for that matter, but I had to do what I felt was right. “I cannot make Mariah testify and I cannot make her give consent. So I cannot divulge her records, her treatment or anything else.”   
“You will be held in contempt of court if you don’t comply!” Barba was not taking it. He wasn’t levelling with the finality of my tone, of the conversation. He wanted more.   
“I don’t care. I told you.” I shook my head. Chewing my lip, I reached down for my back and slung it over my shoulder.   
“Raina, please.” Olivia took a step towards me but I moved for the door.   
“I’m sorry but I won’t help you.”   
As soon as I opened the door, I knew I was putting an end to the conversation with them at that point.   
Sonny reacted quickly as I closed the door to Olivia’s office behind me. He sped over to me as Fin and Amanda turned around towards their desk, looking away from us, even though I knew they were straining their ears to hear,   
“Rai.” Sonny spoke softly as I pushed past him in the direction of the doors. “Babe.”   
“I have to get back to work.” I brushed off his hand from my sleeve and shoved open the door, not bothering that it swung back and almost hit him once I had swept through them.   
“Raina, I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean to hurt you with this.”   
I ignored him and stabbed my finger into the button for the elevator.   
“Jesus, at least look at me.” he sighed, exasperated.   
“What do you want me to say?” I snapped and spun to face him. His brow was tense with fret, his lips were set into a concerned purse. And I hated seeing that. Deep down, I knew I didn’t want him to be upset.   
But I had the right to be upset. I had the right to be annoyed, betrayed, pissed the fuck off. and I was going to use that right to the best of my ability.   
“Do you want me to say that I’m okay with this? That I like being lied to or deceived? Am I supposed to be happy that I was the last one to know that I was getting subpoenaed? That my boyfriend’s department are taking legal action against me?” I could hear my voice breaking a bit and I had to dig my nails into my palm again to stop the thick tears.   
His expression contorted in hurt. “I didn’t mean…I didn’t know what do but I-”  
“No. I can’t deal with this right now, okay?” I put my hand up to stop him. I didn’t want to hear the excuses, the reasons behind what he did. “You… you should have told me. I feel like I’ve just been used again, like you just used me for access to my patients-”  
“Do not say that!” Sonny grasped my arm, not angry but not happy either. “I didn’t use you. Do you really think I’ve been dating you for six months to get access to a patient over a crime that hadn’t even happened yet? I’m not that guy- I’m not the reporter. I didn’t-”  
He knew what I was thinking- he usually did. He knew that my mind had gone to the incident with the journalist. And he also knew how much that screwed with me, how much it hurt.   
“I told you,” I pulled away from him. “I’m not talking about this right now. I’m pissed at you. And I have to now deal with my hysterical patient and try to reassure her that I’m not going to turn over every inch of her life to the courts.”   
The elevator dinged as Sonny ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “Can I- I’m going to come round later and we-”  
“Don’t. I’m on call.” I didn’t lie, I really was on call and been the whole week. I stepped into the lift, staring off to the side to avoid eye contact with him.   
Even when we were on call, we would still see each other and, at times, leave each other to go to work. I could see the disappointment, the fear in his eyes as the doors closed without me saying anything more.   
Honestly? It was the first time I was truly unsure of my relationship with Sonny. And that scared me.


End file.
